John Vigor's Blog

Coins to bring you luck

2012-01-26T20:56:00.000-08:00

WHEN I LOOK atthe forest of masts in a marina I wonder how many of those masts have coinsunder them. The ritual of placing a coin under the mast to bring a ship luckgoes back thousands of years. The ancient Greeks believed that when you diedyou had to cross the River Styx to get to Hades, which, in those days, wasregarded simply as the Underworld, the home of the dead. It wasn't hell as wethink about it now.But you had to have a coin to pay the boatman to take you across the river.

Every boatI've owned (at least those larger than a sailing dinghy) has had a coin underthe mast, or, in one case, a thin disk of gold. It's not that I'm superstitious, it's just that I'm a sucker for ritualand tradition and . . . oh well, all right, I guess I'll have to admit it, I'm superstitious.

When a largemedieval ship was discovered preserved in mud near Guangzhou, in Fujien, China,archeologists found coins inserted into the scarf joints in her keel. In fact, the Guangzhou ship was furnishedwith a whole set of coins that formed a representation of the moon and thestars of the Great Bear constellation.

Anothermedieval vessel, the Vejby Cog, a boat originally about 45 feet long, wasdiscovered in 1976 at Vejby strand in Denmark. There were still ceramics onboard and, more significantly, about 100 English gold coins dated 1351 to 1377.Three of these had been placed under the mast.

Modernnavies have continued the tradition. One of the U.S. Navy's newest carriers,the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, has herlucky coins placed under the huge island house that contains the bridge,controls rooms and pilot house.

Captain JohnW. Goodwin placed his gold naval-aviator wings there, along with a selection ofcoins. The ceremony was conducted on November 11, 200, when giant craneshoisted the 650-ton island house in place.

So if yourmast doesn't yet have a coin under it, you might want to start thinking aboutit. You don't have to use rare or expensive coins. In fact, in the days ofwooden ships, when even skilled artisans earned comparatively little, it wasregarded as imprudent to use gold.

So choose acoin that means something to you, one that was minted in the year the boat waslaunched, perhaps, or one from the year when you were born.

Today's Thought

Against a lucky man, even a god has littlepower.
— PubliliusSyrus, Sententiae

Welcome to number 500

WE HAVEreached another little milestone together, you and I. This is the 500th Mainly about Boats column. You can read any one of them by clicking on the list of subjects shownat the bottom of this page.

Incidentally,although the official name of this column is Mainly about Boats, I have never emphasized it. Hardly evenmentioned it, in fact, except in the little line that asks you to tune in onMonday, Wednesday and Friday for a new column. Perhaps it needs moreprominence.

At the sametime, the number of Followers has reached 100 for the first time, somethingthat will have repercussions, I'm sure, for Col. Ivor Tungin-Cheaque, Chairmanof Vigor's Silent Fan Club, the biggest fan club in the world. I'm sure we will be hearing from him as soonas he can chew through his restraints once again.

In any case,I'd like to thank you all for your support, your comments and suggestions, andyour occasional rude and uninformed criticism, which I don't print and don'ttake any notice of, so there. As KingsleyAmis once said, "If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point inwriting."

Tailpiece

"Sorryto hear that your wife ran away with your chauffeur."
"Ah, noproblem. I was going to fire him anyway."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

About propellers

2012-01-24T22:34:00.000-08:00

MOST PEOPLEwho sail also do a fair amount of motoring. The thing that makes motoring possible is the propeller, so it behoovessailing people to know more about propellers than most of them do.

In the longhistory of ships, the propeller is a fairly recent invention. The first screwpropeller was used in England in 1838, and the first vessel to cross theAtlantic with the aid of a propeller was the British ship Great Britain in1845. The development of propellers has been advancing ever since.

Auxiliarysailboat propellers usually have two or three blades, and most powerboat propshave three or four blades. Each blade is twisted so that if it turned in asolid medium it would bore its way through like an auger bit. In water,however, the blades act more like the wings of a plane in flight, gaining"lift" as they turn, and their rate of advance is reduced byslippage.

Interestingly,a propeller with no slip would displace no water and therefore generate nothrust. It's similar to the principle that governs the lift generated by asailboat's keel — if there were no leeway at all, the keel would not generatelift.

The Complete Boating Encyclopedia provides agreatly simplified definition of a propeller as "a pump, submerged in thefluid it is pumping. Normal rotation sucks the water from ahead of thepropeller, accelerates it, and discharges it astern, creating an oppositereaction that pushes the boat forward."

Two-bladedscrews are the most efficient because each blade moves through water that isleast disturbed by the passage of the other blade. But to get the blade arearequired, the blades must be comparatively long, and often there isn'tsufficient clearance between the propeller shaft and the bottom of the hull.Therefore, three or more broader blades of smaller diameter are used instead.Nevertheless, some very fast small powerboats, as well as sailboats seeking toreduce drag under sail, use two-bladed props.

Alarge-diameter, slow-turning propeller is usually more efficient than a smallone turning at high speed, although an exception is made to this rule for boatsoperating at about 35 knots or more. In small craft, "slow-turning"means fewer than 1,000 revolutions per minute.

The problemfor sailboats is that a big, slow-turning prop creates an awful lot ofdetrimental drag when the boat is under sail alone. So it is usual to compromise, with a lessefficient, smaller, faster-turning prop that allows better performance undersail.

Incidentally, the amount of slippage experienced by apropeller has always amazed me. Onauxiliary sailboats the slippage usually amounts to between 40 and 55 percent.

Today's Thought

You shall have joy, or you shall have power,said God; you shall not have both.

— Emerson, Journals

Tailpiece

"Whatdid her father say when you asked him if you could marry her?"
"Hedarn near broke my arm."
"Did hehit you?"
"Hellno, it's just that he was shaking my hand so hard."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Puffs and luffs

2012-01-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

IT'S ASTRANGE THING, but have you noticed how often the wind will start to rise orshift in direction just as you're about to enter a congested anchorage or portunder sail? It's as if the weather gods are deliberately setting out to testyou.

You know youshould reef to reduce speed and heeling, but either you can't leave the helm orthere simply isn't room to heave to while you take in sail. So — what to do?

In a puff,spring a luff;

In a lullkeep her full.

That's theold advice. It applies to cruisers as much as racers. Feather the mainsail inthe gusts by giving it some sheet and pointing up close to the wind. Then, when the gust passes, fall off well toleeward.

You'll becarving a zigzag course and no doubt alarming the landlubbers watching you fromshore, but you will be averaging the required course and your boat will beunder better control.

You can't dothis for long, of course. It's a short-term expedient to get you out ofimminent trouble. If you're planning to continue for any distance, you mustfind a place where you can tuck in a reef or claw down the sails and fire upthe engine.

Today'sThought

All thefirst part of a voyage is spent in getting a ship ready for sea, and the lastpart in getting her ready for port.
— Richard HenryDana, Jr.

Tailpiece

A poultrybreeder noticed that one of his hens was sick. He wrung the bird's neck,fearing highly infectious fowl pest, and sent it off to a government lab fortesting.
Ten dayslater he received the official report:
"Thisbird died of a broken neck."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The Catalina 27

2012-01-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

SOMEONEASKED ME the other day what I think of the Catalina 27. "I've heard it'slightly built and not very seaworthy," he said.

Well, I hadto admit I rarely think about the Catalina 27, but when I do, I recollect thatthere are good reasons why it's one of the most popular small sailboats in theUnited States.

She wasdesigned and built by Southern Californian Frank Butler, and well over 6,000have been built. She's a fin-keeler witha raked, detached rudder well aft, and a masthead sloop rig. But she was never designed for sea work, andnever pretended to be. Early boats lacked backing plates on deck hardware,stanchions, and rails, so that the gelcoat flexed and cracked quickly. Through-hullfittings were simple gate valves screwed onto pipe nipples glassed into thehull. Spreader sockets were made of cast aluminum, which fractured whenoverstressed. And so on.

On the otherhand, this boat has more headroom and interior space than almost any other 27-footeron the market. In fact, she has about the maximum amount of interior room youcould possibly cram into a 27-footer — and the trick that made it all work wasthe cunning design of her curved topsides. She doesn't look boxy or ugly.

Newcomers tosailing didn't have to pay BMW prices for their Volkswagen boats. They rightlyperceived them to be good value for money and well suited to the job this boatwas expected to do: family racing and weekend cruising, with the odd shortcoastal passage thrown in.

Catalina 27scome with inboard engines or outboard engines, and if your sailing area allowsyou to use one, an outboard engine has many advantages, starting with price andeasy maintenance.

Despite thefact that she was designed for inshore work, several Catalina 27s have made circumnavigations. "We don't recommend using the boat thisway, " Practical Sailor magazineonce commented, "but it goes to show that good preparation and seamanship maybe more important than your boat when it comes to successful offshorevoyaging."

PatrickChildress, of Newport, Rhode Island, was one of those circumnavigators and hetold me he installed chainplates on the outer hull for the aft lower shrouds."I used to watch the side decks flexing, and it was scary," he said.He first tried installing backing plates twice as large and thick as theoriginals, but that only threatened to pull out a larger chunk of the sidedeck.

Nevertheless,Childress sailed around the world in three years, experienced no major problemswith the boat, and returned safely to the United States. That has to saysomething for Frank Butler and his Catalina 27.

Today's Thought

The sea is only safe and harmless as long asthe ship is safe and seaworthy and ably handled.

— FelixRiesenberg

Tailpiece

When theliving room sofa is a hive of activity, you can be sure there's a little honeyaround.

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The Dekker enigma

2012-01-17T20:03:00.000-08:00

I DON'T KNOW quite what to makeof Laura Dekker. In a few days she willbecome the youngest person to sail around the world singlehanded. But the accoladeswill be somewhat muted because the former little Dutch girl has suddenly becomea little New Zealand girl.

She appears to have attempted tochange her nationality, and her boat's registration, in mid- voyage in a fit ofpique. Her 37-foot Jeanneau ketch now flies the flag of New Zealand.

In 2009, when Laura firstannounced her plans to circumnavigate the globe, Dutch authorities intervenedand insisted she should first finish school. The child welfare authoritiesbrought the case to court and a judge ruled that the then 13-year-old was tooyoung to travel alone. Laura then ran away and took a plane to Sint Maarten,where she was arrested and sent back to the Netherlands.

In July 2010, a judge gave herpermission to carry out her plans—provided she agreed to a number ofconditions, including continuing her secondary education through an onlineteaching programme set up for Dutch-speaking children abroad.

But naughty Laura has reneged onthat agreement. She hasn't been doingher homework as she promised to.

Officially, Laura does not haveto comply with Dutch regulations regarding her education, as she is no longerregistered as a Dutch citizen. She holds New Zealand citizenship because shewas born there—on a boat—while her parents were sailing around the world.

The Dutch newspaperDe Volkskrant says theWorld School, which organises the correspondence course education, is afraid aprecedent will be set if they don’t intervene. “Laura is contending with an80-year school attendance battle. Compulsory school attendance is sacred in theNetherlands.”

There is no doubt that Laura Dekkeris greatly self-centered and very stubborn. But she is also very capable, surprisinglymature in many ways, and an excellent sailor. She sailed around the world the easy way, taking the trade-wind routevia the Panama Canal, so her accomplishment does not begin to compare with thatof Jessica Watson, the Australian who sailed singlehanded and non-stop around the world via the great Southern Capes at theage of 16.

Laura received outside help fromher doting father and others at every stop. She received weather routing and advice every day by satellitecommunication. She appealed for money from the public on her website to helpher indulge herself in her selfish dream. She won't win any official record, because records like hers are notlonger recognized by any competent authority. But she will publish another book, no doubt make a lot of money, andprobably find a job as a professional sailor.

I wonder if the Kiwis will clutchher to their hearts as one of their own? I don't think the Dutch will, now she has kicked her fellow countrymenin the teeth.

Today's Thought

Loyalty is the holiest good inthe human heart.
— Seneca, Epistulae ad Lucilium

Tailpiece

A real Scrooge of a yachtsman whowas away from home sent his wife a birthday check for one million kisses.
His wife called him and said:"Thanks for the check. The harbormaster cashed it for me last night."

(Drop by everyMonday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Think inverted

2012-01-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

IT'S THEOPINION of a British expert that cruising yachts should be designed for minimumstability when they're upside down. I mentioned this in my book The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat, and Ibelieve it's as valid now as it was when I wrote the book.

John Lacey,former honorary naval architect of the Royal Naval Sailing Association, and amember of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, said in the fall 1982 issue ofthe RNSA Journal that until thedisaster of the 1979 Fastnet Race, few people had explored the stabilitycharacteristics of yachts sailing on coastal waters, beyond a 90-degreeknockdown.

But on thenight of August 13, 1979, that complacency changed. Sixty-three yachts eachexperienced at least one knockdown substantially farther than 90 degrees. Manydid not right themselves quickly, and remained upside down for considerableperiods.

Lacy saidthe influence of the then-popular International Offshore Rule (IOR) for racingyachts had radically changed the shape of yacht hulls by greatly increasing theproportion of beam to length.

"Increaseof beam gives great sail-carrying power without additional ballast," hepointed out. "It also provides the benefit of greatly increasedaccommodation in a given length."

But theshape of such a hull also makes it very stable when inverted. In other words, if it is turned upside downby a wave, it tends to stay upside down. To bring the boat upright again wouldrequire about half the energy needed to capsize the boat in the first place.

"Sincethe initial capsize may have been caused by a once-in-a-lifetime freak wave,one could be waiting a long time for a wave big enough to overcome thisinverted stability."

By way ofcontrast, Lacey calculated that a narrower cruising hull with a lower center ofgravity, such as a Nicholson 32, would require only one-tenth of the capsizeenergy to recover from a 180-degree capsize.

Beamy,shallow-bodied boats, he said, "may increase the size of the wave neededto initiate capsize, but in the end the sea will still win if the wave isawkward enough. It therefore seems in my opinion that we should tackle theproblem from the other end, and design yachts for minimum stability when upsidedown."

So, torecap, here are the main requisites for fast recovery from a 180-degree capsizein a monohull:

Ø Moderate to narrow beam

Ø A low center ofgravity (mainly from a deep, heavy,ballast keel)

Ø A moderately highcabin top with reasonably wide side decks, and

Ø Watertight hatches,ports, ventilators, and cockpit lockers so little or no water gains ingresswhile the boat is upside down.

Finally, Ialways advise anyone contemplating taking a boat into blue water to "thinkinverted." Try to imagine all thechaos that can happen when a boat is forcibly dumped upside down. And takesteps to prevent that chaos.

Today's Thought

If the danger seems slight, then truly it isnot slight.
— FrancisBacon, De Augmentis Scientarium:Principiis Obstare

Tailpiece

"Whydid that sailor buy drinks for all those girls?"
"Helikes to have a port in every sweetheart."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The truth about mist aches

2012-01-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

SOMEONE who signs himself "Monohull in Maine"left a heartening comment saying how much he enjoys this column. "Inparticular, the lack of advertising, the good clear writing, and the highstandard of grammar and spelling."

Well, "Monohull," I am greatly flattered, but Ihave to admit that it's not all my work. I've got a spelling checker on mycomputer and I use it on the advice of Jerrold H. Zar,who wrote the original version of this poem in 1992:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a whirred

And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write—
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee for two long
And eye can put the error rite;
It’s rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no.
It’s letter perfect in its weigh—
My checker tolled me sew.

Today's Thought

I believe that every English poet should read the Englishclassics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them,travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and—if he is luckyenough—know the love of an honest woman.
— Robert Graves, Lecture at Oxford.

Tailpiece

"John, what's mymother going to say when I tell her you kissed me twice?"
"But I haven'tkissed you twice. I only kissed you once."
"Yeah, but . . .you're not going yet, are you?"

(Drop by every Monday,Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

We need MANLY knots

2012-01-10T17:21:00.000-08:00

ON KNOTNIGHT at the club I was one of the few chosen to demonstrate my nautical skills. I was manning a Knot Table all by myself. TheSheet Bend table, actually. When acouple of likely learners drifted along I told them: "I'll show you how to tie one, but I neveruse it myself. Don't trust it." They wandered off looking vaguely dissatisfied, not grateful as theyshould have been. They stopped by some others and pointed in my direction, andafter that for some reason nobody else stopped by.

Meanwhile, allaround me, people at different tables were cooing over Square Knots and Figure-Eightknots. A large group of women at onetable was clucking like a bunch of hens about how good the Clove Hitch was fortying fenders to lifelines. I could hardly believe it. Who has to be shown how to tie fenders tolifelines for goodness' sake? Where have they been all their sailing lives? Who has to be shown how to tie a Clove Hitch?And to top it all, they were praising their lady instructor as if she'd justdiscovered the Dead Sea Scrolls or figured out that the earth goes round thesun and not vice- versa, as they had obviously previously been given to imagine.

Of course, Ishould have been manning the Running-Emergency-Bowline table, but there wasn'tone because it isn't an official knot. I had been practicing the Running-Emergency-Bowlineknot for weeks, ever since I saw it demonstrated at a Coast Guard Auxiliarymeeting. It's not a proper bowline,actually, but it looks very much like one at first glance. What it's all about is this: When someone falls off the end of a pier andseems to be drowning, you run as fast as you can along the pier towardhim. You run with a coil of rope in yourhand, and as you run you give two deft flicks of the wrist and Voila! the end of the rope suddenly has a loop thatwill not come undone, a sort of instant bowline. The drowner simply insertshimself into the loop, leaving you, the daring, gallant rescuer, to drag himashore.

It looksquite magical and manly when you do it, even when you're not running down apier, and I'm sure a lot of ladies would be attracted to a man who can do the RunningEmergency Bowline, if ever the stupid club would allow a man to show them howhe does it.

If ever Ibecome a club commodore, I'll make sure there's a Running-Emergency-Bowlineknot table on Knot Night. Never mind thedumb Sheet Bend. Never mind the wimpy Clove Hitch. Manly knots is what we want. Knots that makethe ladies swoon. Even if they aren't real knots.

Today'sThought

I say that Iam myself, but what is this Self of mine
But a knotin the tangled skein of things where chance and chance combine?
— DonMarquis, Heir and Serf

Tailpiece

Two littleAmerican Indian boys were sitting by the entrance to the reservation with asmall puppy when a white man in a priest's robe drove up in an SUV.
"Whatare you doing?" he asked.
"We'retelling stories," said one boy. "Whoever tells the biggest lie getsto keep the dog."
"That'sterrible," said the priest. "When I was a little boy I never toldlies."
The boyslooked at each other with big round eyes. Finally, one said: "Okay. That'sit. The white man wins the dog."

(Drop by everyMonday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Taming that halyard

2012-01-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

IF THERE'S ONE NOISE that drives memad at night, it's the slap of a halyard against a mast. It has never happenedon any boat of mine, because I take good care to tie the halyards back to theshrouds. But not everyone is so finicky, and there have been many times atanchor and in marinas when the maddening clank-clank-clank of a neighbor'shalyard has woken me.

If I hear it before I climb into mybunk, I will go over and ask the skipper very nicely if I can help him stop thenoise. Often they are surprised that I am affected. How people can ignore thatnoise on their own boats I don't know, but there seem to be plenty who can.

I'm not one of those who can sleepthrough noise. I wake up if the wind changes direction, or the current swingsus around. I wake up if there are strange splashes outside on a dead-calmnight. I know it's probably fish jumping, but I have to get up and have a look.If I don't get up, I keep listening — my ears are my night-time eyes — and ifall the sounds seem right I go back to sleep.

I have to admit there are a fewthings I can tune out. The slap ofthe wires inside my own my mast is oneof them It takes me a couple of nights at the start of a trip, but after thatit's okay. And yet the faintest slap of a neighbor's halyard always drives memad.

Many a time I have climbed aboard astranger's boat in a marina to silence a clanking halyard, and each time I'vewondered about the ethics of it. I know I'm taking chance in a society that istrigger-happy about suing, but I plead in mitigation that it is unneighborly toleave your halyards flapping so that they will annoy neighbors. I also offermyself the solace that it is the seamanlike thing to do, as it would be torescue a flapping roller jib in a windstorm, or to push back a fender that hadpopped up, so that the hull was rubbing against the pier.

I myself would be thankful if someonesaved my jib or my hull for me, and I wouldn't dream of suing if something wentwrong in a sincere attempt to put things right. The Good Samaritan laws can betricky, I know, but there are a couple of things you can do to protect yourselfif somebody's mast falls down after you tied back his halyards. First of all,make sure no-one sees you in action. If there are other people around, wear awig, a ski-mask, or a balaclava helmet. Secondly, don't leave fingerprints.Wear gloves. I find the best kind are those gardening gloves with the littlepimples.

Today's Thought

As for doing good, that is one of the professions that are full.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

Tailpiece
An apple a day will keep the doctor away. Well, at least your insides will be healthyif the insecticide is working.
(Dropby every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Fairy moans and temptation

2012-01-05T19:48:00.000-08:00

OLD WOTSISNAME says hemisses Sarah Palin. He wishes she'd been running in Iowa. "Ron Paul can bequite funny but Sarah is a real hoot," he said.

We were sitting in thecockpit of his concrete barge on the weekend. He was avoiding working on hisengine. I was avoiding helping him, and doing my best to reduce his surplusstock of beer. We said Sarah reminded us of Mrs. Malaprop and recalled that SarahPalinprop was the one who invented the lovely word "refudiate."

OW said: "Youcould have knocked me over with a fender when she dropped out of the race. It'sjust beyond my apprehension. I'd be diluted if she came back."

"Success inpolitics is elusive," I pointed out. "To all intensive purposes it'sa pigment of your imagination."

"That doesn'tdiminish the extraordinarity of it," said OW, who, for once was lookingvery dashing with a navy-blue crevasse around his neck.

We both paused toreflect on the profundity of his remark, and to suck on our beers a bit more.Then OW said: "Actually, politicians are a bunch of sharks."

"Quiteright," I said, "the waters of Washington are infatuated withthem."

There was another pauseand then I said: "I'm sorry to interrupt your strain of thought, butwhatever happened to the guy you hired to paint your galley after thefire?"

"I had to fire himfor gross incontinence," said OW. "He just started painting all over the powder from the fireextinguisher."

"Hah!" Isaid. "Serves you right for buying a Chinese extinguisher. It was just awolf in cheap clothing."

"It was anantique," OW admitted, "but it worked. And Robin Lee Graham had thesame kind of extinguisher when he circumvented the world in 1965."

I pondered the significanceof that while OW fetched another couple of cans. Then he said: "Gettingback to politics, I wouldn't mind getting up-close and personal with Sarah. Nudge-nudge,wink-wink. In political terms she's a hottie."

I was shocked."But she's married," I said. "You're making amalaproposition."

"Can't help it.It's all to do with fairy moans."

"Fairymoans?"

"Yeah," saidOW, "Scientifically proven. Everybody's got fairy moans. Even you've got fairy moans."

"That'soffensive," I said. I put down my beer and stepped ashore in dignifiedfashion. "I resemble that remark."

"Fairymoans," said OW reflectively as I walked away. And then, earnestly:"Lead a snot into temptation."

Today'sThought

Theonly way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
— Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray.

Tailpiece

"We're celebratingthe anniversary of my wife's birthday tonight."
"Don't you mean you're celebrating the anniversary of her birth?"
"No, no. This isthe fifth anniversary of her 39th birthday."

(Drop by every Monday,Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Lack of communication

2012-01-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

THE U. S. COAST GUARD recently used up a lot of taxpayer moneytrying to find and rescue a sailor who wasn't lost or in trouble. Ira Foreman,66, of Seattle, didn't ask to be found or rescued but the Coast Guard wentafter him anyhow. They started a massive four-day search off Hawaii for Foreman,singlehanded on a 36-foot sailboat. The search covered some 209,000 square miles. Involved inthe search were a MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, a HC-130 Hercules airplane, and twoNavy P-3 Orion planes. He was right there under all their noses, but theydidn't find him.

Foreman eventually sailed into Honokohau Harbor on the BigIsland, after two weeks at sea. He apparently was blown off course by strongwinds during what was supposed to be a one-day voyage from Kauai to Oahu. Whenhe didn't appear after six days, he was reported missing and the Coastiessprang into action.

Foremansaid he encountered strong winds but was never in distress.

Every timethis kind of thing happens, the public starts foaming at the mouth aboutirresponsible yachtsmen. Inevitably, demands are made that the perpetrator ofthis crime should be made to pay for the rescue effort.

And what itall boils down to is questions of communication and ethics. If the Coast Guard had known that he wasn'tin trouble, they wouldn't have gone looking for him. And if he had had thesense to realize that someone would be sure to report him missing because hewas long overdue from a one-day sail, and if he had had a radio to telleveryone he was all right, there wouldn't have been any fuss or bother.

So thequestion is: Should all sailboats going over the horizon be forced to carrycommunications equipment and keep a regular listening watch? Or should they perhaps be forced to carry oneof those small satellite radios that record your position daily?

EricHiscock, the British circumnavigator, never carried long-distance radio. Hisphilosophy was that if you were a professional seaman on a freighter or afishing boat you were entitled to be rescued in an emergency, and thus youshould carry radio equipment capable of calling for help. But if you were anamateur sailor putting to sea purely for your own pleasure, you had no ethical rightto shout for rescue when you got into trouble. You had no right to put otherpeople's lives at risk to save your own. You had to be self-sufficient, and notdependent on the courage of rescuers and the goodwill of taxpayers in your owncountry, or foreign countries, to bail you out of danger.

This is nota popular view, of course, but I happen to subscribe to it also, and have nevercarried anything but short-range VHF.

As I said, Foremandidn't ask to be rescued. He did nothing illegal. Sailboats are not required bylaw to carry radio equipment, and shouldn't be. The ease with which boats canset sail on the High Seas, especially from America, is one of those rare humanfreedoms that can erode all to easily in the face of official pressure. But thechances of that happening can be reduced with a little common sense.

If you'rethe kind of person who knows he can take two weeks over a one-day passage, forgoodness' sake tell somebody about it before you leave, so the authoritieswon't be alerted. If you do happen to have long-range communications equipment,let them know ashore that you're OK, just somewhat tardy. And if you're aHiscock fan, let them know in advance that your upper lip is stiff and you'drather drown than suffer the ignominy of being rescued by the Coast Guard.

Today's Thought

Where one danger's near,
The more remote, tho' greater, disappear,
So, from the hawk, birds to man's succour flee,
So from fir'd ships man leaps into the sea.
— AbrahamCowley, Davideis

Tailpiece

"Waiter,how long have you been working here?"
"It'sabout a week now, sir."
"Oh,okay — then you can't be the one who took my order."

(Drop by everyMonday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The best of 2011

2012-01-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU. I think 2012 isgoing to be a good year. There is something about an even-numbered year thatpleases and reassures me more than an odd-numbered one does. I suspect 2011 isa prime number, which makes me feel insecure and inferior. I like to be incharge of numbers but 2011 thumbs its nose at me. I can't order it to divideitself into nice, even, bite-sized bits like a decent docile number should. Onthe other hand, I can divide good old 2012 by 2 and by 4 and 503 and 1006 andprobably by a whole lot of other numbers if I feel like it, which leaves mefeeling in charge. So yes, I feel much better about 2012 than I did about 2011.

Nevertheless, 2011 had its moments forme, and it's only right that we should record them for posterity. I learnedsome new things, picked up some new phrases, and tucked away little literarysnippets for future use. Here's what I mean:

The most apt name for 2011:

A Norwegian new to sailing bought a boatto sail around the world and struck a sandbank outside his home harbor. Whilehe was waiting for the tide to rise, he made himself a cup of tea. His stovecaught fire, set the galley alight and burned the boat down to the waterline.He escaped unhurt in a rubber dinghy. His name? Bornt Olose.

The best poem of 2011:

Teethis very nice to have,
Theyfills you with content.
(If you don’t understandthat now
You will when they have went.)

The cleverest Tailpiece of2011:

Time flies like a speeding arrow. Fruit flies like a rotten banana.

The saddest story of 2011:

Stavros O'Blimey, inventor of the patented self-darkening whiskyglass, died in penury in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The most common exercises of 2011:

Running up bills
Hurling insults
Leaping to conclusions
Rubbing people up the wrong way
Pulling the wool over people's eyes
Throwing caution to the wind
Dragging people’s names into the mud
Dodging creditors, and
Flying off the handle.

Best nature poem of 2011:

Extensive exhaustive researches
By Darwin and Huxley and Ball
Have conclusively proved that the hedgehog
Can scarcely be ravished at all.

While further industrious enquiry

Has incontrovertibly shown
That this state of comparative safety
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.

The best reality checks of 2011:

Every silverlining has a cloud.
There’s a tunnelat the end of every light.

Best Dog-Latin mottos of 2011:

Vinumsuper omnia.
Contra ventum non urinatum.
Illegitimusnon carborundum.
Andbehind the head door: Veni Vidi Wiwi

The most honest comment on exteriorbrightwork in 2011:

TheJohn Keats Varnish Rule: “A thing of beauty is a job forever.”

Today's Thought

Now in the New Year reviving oldDesires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solituderetires.
—Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat.

Tailpiece

Cannibalsin the Congo captured a missionary as he was traveling up the river in a dugoutcanoe. Theywere about to drop him into a pot of boiling water when he cried out:"Wait. Don't touch me. I possess powerful magic."

Hewent to the canoe, and patted the outboard motor. He pulled the string and itburst into life with a loud roar. "See," he said. "I have power at my fingertips."

Thesavages fell back muttering in amazement.

"Well,I guess we'd better let him go," said the chief. "That really wasmagic. I've never before seen an outboard start on first pull."

(Dropby every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

A fantasy dispelled

2011-12-29T20:08:00.000-08:00

MY CHRISTMASPRESENT has brought me back to my senses. Like many amateur sailors, I havedreamed for most of my life about living on a desert island — an uninhabitedtropical atoll in the South Pacific, with softly rustling palm trees fringing awhite powder beach lapped by warm turquoise wavelets.

My presentwas a book called An lsland to Oneself,written by Tom Neale, a New Zealander who stopped dreaming a dream he'd had for30 years, and finally acted it out. Ihad heard of Tom, of course. His name comes up frequently on the cruisinggrapevine, but I had never read his book.

In 1952,when he was 50, Tom settled on tiny Anchorage Island, in the remote SuvarovAtoll of the northern Cook Islands. It was absolutely the island of his dreams.His book describes how he caught fish and crayfish with little effort. Coconutsgrew in profusion. He established a garden where vegetables flourished so wellthat he got three crops a year.

Once in ablue moon a small yacht would call, and he'd spend a couple of days showing offhis island and the improvements he had made. It must have looked and sounded idyllic to his visitors.
But no matter how much he loved his island andhis way of life, you get the feeling that something was missing from his littleparadise, or, rather, that something was incomplete. It wasn't that he didn't know the physicalrisks he was taking. He accepted themquite philosophically, and in fact he nearly died from a back injury. By some miracle, two American men sailed intothe lagoon on a yacht and found him immobilized in bed, unable to move, even tosit up to eat or drink. He had been there four days. They fed him, massagedhim, and nursed him back to health.

He wasfinally driven off his island when a group of pearl fishers moved in andspoiled his solitude. He went backlater, though, and spent most of his senior years there until he was forced tomake a final move because of cancer.

What comesacross very forcibly is that this idea of living on an uninhabited island isfantasy, nothing more. It's true that some people will be able to live out afantasy far longer than others, but in the end, it seems to me, human beingsneed change. Even paradise becomes boring if you have no contrast, nothing to which to compare it. Tom Neale actually experienced the pipe dreamthat so many of us fantasized about for so many years. But in the end his book has done me the favorof demonstrating that, as a long-termexperience, this desert island businessis simply impractical. It will bother me no more. A visit would be wonderful. Two weeks, eventwo months, knowing that there would be a change at the end of that time, but certainlynot a lifetime.

I have sat underthe rustling palms on a gorgeous deserted beach on a tropical island calledFernando de Noronha, but my time there was limited because I was on my way togreater adventures. Now, in place of afantasy, I have concrete memories of that limited episode. Those memories areenough to keep me warm in the cold wet winter of the Pacific Northwest. Thanksto Tom Neale, I no longer need the TomNeale dream.

Today's Thought
There is a need to find and sing our ownsong, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing canroost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.
— BarbaraLazear Ascher, Playing after Dark

Tailpiece
Two homelessmen helped a limping nun across the street.
"Whathappened to your leg?" asked one.
"Itwisted my ankle in the bath," said the nun.
After she'dgone, one man asked: "What's a bath,then?"
"Don'task me," said the other. "I'm not a Catholic."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for anew Mainly about Boats column.)

Instant ancient whisky

2011-12-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

MANY OF THE BEST-APPOINTED YACHTS have medicine cabinetscontaining Mackinlay's whisky. This particular brand of Scotch seems to be muchin demand to combat the effects of head colds, general lassitude, loweredspirits, and other yachting maladies. It was with some interest, therefore, that I spotted this newsreport from Agence France Presse. It was published on January 17, 2011:

WELLINGTON(AFP) – Three bottles of whisky abandoned in Antarctica by British explorer SirErnest Shackleton more than a century ago will be sent to Scotland forscientific analysis, reports said Friday.

Thebottles of Mackinlay's whisky were part of a cache recovered last year frombeneath Shackleton's Antarctic hut, built in 1908 as part of his failed attemptto reach the South Pole, national news agency NZPA reported.

Itsaid the whisky would be sent to the Whyte & Mackaydistillery in Scotland, which now owns the Mackinlay's brand, where it would beanalyzed in an attempt to recreate the original recipe.

--You will have realized by now that almost awhole year has passed and no scientific report on Sir Ernest's whisky has beenforthcoming. This is very suspicious. What do you imagine has happened to thosethree well-matured bottles of whisky?

I can see them now in my mind's eye, thosescientists, I mean, standing around in their white lab coats along the flaringBunsen burners and steaming test tubes, taking a wee doech an doris, andanother wee doech an doris, and toasting the good taste of the Shackletonexpedition, until the inevitable happened.

And yet, by some miracle of alcoholicosmosis, there is now on the market a product advertised as Mackinlay'sRare Old Highland Malt, which, it is claimed, is a meticulous re-creation ofthe original malt whisky shipped to Antarctica in 1907 by the explorer ErnestShackleton to fortify his 'Nimrod' expedition.

Lessthan a year after they allegedly re-discovered the recipe, they have a rare oldmalt whisky ready for sale. The web advertisement says:

"Thestory of how several wooden crates of this precious whisky were abandoned tothe Antarctic winter in early 1909, then rediscovered over a century later, isone that celebrates the enduring spirit of both man and malt. You can read allabout the journey and re-discovery on this site, and we also reveal how thisunique whisky was carefully re-created for you to savour and enjoy."

Well,I still harbor my suspicions. I was brought up to be very skeptical aboutadvertising. I wouldn't let a drop of this new/old whisky pass my lips until Ihad seen the scientific analysis.

Andthere's another thing that worries me. If the original whisky was so precious,why didn't Sir Ernest and his gallant Nimrods drink it? Just asking.

Today'sThought
Wheneversomeone asks me if I want water with my Scotch, I say I'm thirsty, not dirty.
—Joe E. Lewis

Tailpiece

Two Wall Street CEOs walked into a car showroom.
"How much is the Rolls-Royce?" asked one.
"Three hundred thousand," said the salesman.
"I'll take it," said the CEO, pulling out a checkbook.
"No, no," said his friend brushing him aside. "This one's on me. You bought lunch."

Sailboat ban proposed

2011-12-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

A LETTERFROM "Lifer" says:

I read inthe Walnut Street Gazeout (should be Gazette) that scientists are worriedbecause the earth's spinning rate is slowing down. Days and nights are gettinglonger. But that's not the major concern. The big problem is that the earth isspinning like a top, and as it slows down it will start to wobble. The poles will tilt nearer the sun in theirarcs, and all the ice will melt.

The seaswill rise and become diluted with fresh water. Lots of land will be inundated and not longer habitable for humans. Lotsof marine plant life and mammals will die out completely. In short, it will bea disaster.

Now itoccurs to me as I lie here staring at the ceiling that is it perfectly normalthat the earth's spinning should slow down as it gradually loses the energythat started it spinning in the first place. But, as usual, Nature has beencompensating. Gravity has been moving the high spots of the earth down to thelow spots of the earth ever since the Big Bang. So the radius of the earth from mountain tops on one side to mountaintops on the other side has been shrinking. Thus, as a ballerina spins faster when she pulls her arms to her sides,the earth has gradually tried to spin faster to make up for the slowing downcaused by waning energy. Thus the rateof spinning has remained more or less equal in all the earth's life.

But now,quite suddenly in cosmic terms, the earth is slowing. And I believe I know why. Let me explain. Asyou know, the earth spins from east to west. As it spins, the surface of theearth encounters resistance from the atmosphere. Once again, over the eons, this resistancehas been lessened by gravity's habit of smoothing out mountain tops and generallysanding things down nice and smooth.

But inrecent years this resistance has increased because of windmills and yachts.

Never beforein the history of the earth have there been so many manmade things sticking upfrom the surface of the earth, all of them designed deliberately to encounterthe atmosphere with force. Never beforehave so many wind farms and private sailboats offered resistance to theatmosphere. The surface of the earth isnow fatally roughened by these foreign protrusions

which, inextracting energy from the atmospheric winds, also serve to retard the earth inits spinning.

If we are tosave our dear earth for future generations, it is obvious that both windmills andsailboats must be banned.

Oh yes, Ican imagine the chorus of protests from rich yachtsmen who don't give a damnfor the rest of us as long as they can pursue their sybaritic pastimes withoutrestriction, but we are talking survival here. I have already contacted my senator regarding having yachting madeillegal in my state and I expect other states to follow suit once my discoveryis made general knowledge. The future of the human race depends on it.

Yours ingreat apprehension etc.

Lifer

Today's Thought

The greatest and most important problems oflife are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but onlyoutgrown.
— Carl Jung.

Tailpiece
"Myneighbor banged on my door at 2:30 this morning, can you believethat?"
"Wow,2:30 a.m.?"
"Yeah,luckily for him I was still up playing my bagpipes."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for anew Mainly about Boats column.)

That time of year

2011-12-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

THIS IS THETIME OF YEAR when many are so busy with parties and presents and family andChristmas trees that their boats tend to be neglected. It's not such a badthing, as long as the neglect is not long-lasting. Boating fever can resume withfervor after a refreshing break, and we can all look forward to a new season ofsailing in the coming spring.

As long asthere had been Christmas, it has been thus. Exactly 100 years ago, this is whatThomas Fleming Day, editor of The Rudder,had to say about it:

"WhenWinter gets up his hook and stands offshore, the boat fever comes on strong andthe itch to be away on the blue again takes hold of us. Sunday finds the boyssidling off towards the yards and wading around in the slush looking over thelaid-up craft.

"Theywalk round and round them, peer at the stern, eye the bow, comment on thespars, find fault with the bottom, and curse the price that makes it not forthem. Year after year this is our amusement. Spring after spring we go throughthe same yards, see the same boats, and express the same opinions regardingtheir appearance and condition. If those boats have ears, how tired they must get,how weary of the silly comments that the boat-fevered busybody makes each Marchunder their hulls.

'A few weeksafter, the yard is almost cleared, except here and there a poor old cripple orrich man's forgotten plaything is left standing surrounded by a raffle oftimber and truck. Over by the fence, lying on its side, is a once crack-a-jackracer, too rotten to be moved and going rapidly to punk.

"And welook on her and think of the days when we will be lying up against the fence,dismantled and broken, while our successors are out cleaving the blue andmaking a mainsheet haul of health and happiness."

* Well, he ended up a little maudlin,there, didn't he? I guess he was rather depressed after a Christmas that hadgone on too long and kept him away from his boat.

But we, ashis successors, can look forward happily to cleaving the blue once again. SoHappy Christmas. Happy Hanukah. Happy Kwanzaa.

Today's Thought

Christmas isa time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits arewhen adults tell the government what they want — and their kids pay for it.

— RichardLamm, former Governor of Colorado.

Tailpiece

"Mygirlfriend thinks I'm a stalker."
"Yourgirlfriend thinks that?"
"Yeah,well, she's not actually my girlfriend yet."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for anew Mainly about Boats column.)

Bliss down below

2011-12-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

PEOPLEOFTEN LAMENT the number of boats that seem never to move from their marinaslips. Just asoften, the pundits will seize upon this fact to proclaim the merits of smallboats, compared with big boats.

Don Caseyat Sailnethad some profound words on this topic: "When you have a modest, simpleboat, you can sail at the drop of a hat, no small advantage for a pastimeentirely dependent on the vagaries of wind.... Smaller sails and lower stressesmake smaller boats easier to sail and arguably safer for a small crew.... Smallboats are handy, tacking easily through narrow waters. They can also traversethin water. In fact, given seaworthiness, a small boat can take you everywhereits larger sibling can go and lots of places beyond the big boat's reach.Small boats are also more economical to own, operate and maintain.... The ployI favor is to own a boat substantially smaller than what you can afford."

This is alltrue, of course, and as a lover of small boats myself I have no quibble withit. But it does overlook one important point.

When I lookat a full marina, especially on a cold and miserable winter afternoon, I wonderhow many unseen people there are aboard those boats. Are the boats really asdeserted as they look?

Justbecause they're not out sailing doesn't mean they're not being used. I havespent many happy hours down below on docked boats. Some of them were biggerthan I could really afford, but they offered comforts that smaller boats couldnot match.

Nothingfeels more cozy than the cabin of yacht when the wind is howling from thesoutheast and cold rain is drumming on the skylights. What better way is therefor the harried city worker to relax than to stretch out on a bunk with afavorite book or good music on the stereo?

To go belowinto the womb-like confines of a cabin smelling of teak and lemon oil is toshut out the worries of the weekday world. And alone, or with a loving companion,there is a satisfaction approaching bliss in doing nothing in peculiar, insimply relaxing in a snug little vessel floating on a highway that — if youwanted to — would take you to all the exciting, exotic places in the world.

Even insummer, an afternoon spent in the sunny cockpit, happily tying a Turk's Head onthe tiller, or lazily re-varnishing the little spot where the jib sheet rubs onthe teak coaming, revitalizes the spirit and feeds the soul.

You maysometimes feel the pressure to go sailing when you don't particularly want to,simply to fall in with the popular notion that you have to leave your slip toprove that you're a proper sailor and not a veranda yachtsman.

But youdon't have to fall for that. How you enjoy your boat is up to you. And if youcan afford a big boat in which you can goof off standing upright, why shouldyou make yourself miserable in one with no more than sitting headroom?

Today's Thought

The bow that's always bent willquickly break;

But if unstrung will serve you atyour need.
So let the mind some relaxationtake
To come back to its task withfresher need.
— Phaedrus, Fables

Tailpiece
Confucius say: "If man think by the inch and talk by theyard, he will be kicked by the foot."

(Drop by everyMonday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Quanta on my mind

2011-12-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

AS I'VEMENTIONED before, I was reading Steinbeck the other day. Or trying to readSteinbeck. It's not always easy, especially when he says: "We doubt verymuch if there are any truly 'closed systems'."

He wastalking about the workings of what he called a primitive principle known as theuniversality of quanta.

Well, itmight be primitive to him, but it's way above my fire-make place, as they sayin Afrikaans.

Neverthelessit reminded me of a remark I overheard at a dockside once long ago. A yacht hadjust arrived in port after taking a long, bad beating in a storm at sea. Shewas a beautiful wooden cruising sloop, 37 feet long, with the long gracefulends and short waterline of the CCA era. She was, in fact, Francis S. Kinney'slovely Pipe Dream design made famousin Skene's Elements of Yacht Design.

Her skipper,Dave Alexander, had just stepped ashore to make fast her mooring lines. Helooked bleary-eyed and exhausted after days and nights without adequate sleep.A friend walked along the dock, greeted him, took a quick look at the battered boatand said: "Wow, how many systems are still working?"

Until thatmoment I had never imagined a sailboat as having "systems." But Igave it some thought and concluded tentatively that the man was right. Therewas a steering system, a communications system, a cooking system, an anchoringsystem, two separate systems for propulsion (sail and power), a system forpumping bilgewater, a system for removing human waste, and so on.

You could,of course, break some of these systems down into smaller components. Forinstance, the steering system on this boat consisted of a tiller and a rudder.The rudder, in turn, consisted of a stock and a blade. The blade, in its turn, wasprobably made up of separate pieces of wood to form its whole.

Nevertheless,as far as I could see now that I'd figured it out, none of these systemsimpinged on any other. In my estimation, each was a closed system. I mean, ifthe rudder failed, you'd still be able to anchor. If the mast fell down, you'dstill be able to motor. If you ran out of beer you'd still be able to radio aMayday.

YetSteinbeck indicates that all these systems affect each other. He maintains theyare separated from each other by only the smallest steps — steps that they cantake in their stride.

He iscertainly right when he says that such systems are not entirely"closed," because that would mean they could exist and do their workwithout outside help or interference. But I still don't accept that a brokentoilet affects the steering system, or a fault with the VHF affects the cookingsystem. So I really don't understand what he's getting at.

I could bemisinformed, of course. Perhaps in my youthful ignorance I wrongly regarded thewhole boat as one unified system to move people from one place to another bysea. Or, even more simply, as a unified system to bring joy and pleasure tothose who love yachts.

For all Iknow, a sailboat might well be a universalitied quantum, as Steinbeck insists. Ormaybe — just maybe — Steinbeck might be wrong and I might be right. (And pigs,the universal units of the breakfast system, might fly.)

Today'sThought

In utterloneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

— JohnSteinbeck

Tailpiece

"Whyare you crying, my love?"
"OhJohn, I cooked you a lovely supper and the dog ate it."
"Jeez,don't sweat it, darling. Tomorrow I'll buy you another dog."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for anew Mainly about Boats column.)

Of boats and men

2011-12-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

WHEN JOHNSTEINBECK was still a comparatively young man he sailed with his great friend,Ed Ricketts, to Mexico to collect samples of marine invertebrates from thebeaches of the Gulf of California. Ricketts was a biologist and had a laboratory in Monterey. When Steinbeck wrote his charming andwell-known work, Cannery Row,Ricketts became the eccentric "Doc," so beloved of the Flophouse Boysand millions of devoted readers.

But there isanother Steinbeck book which, although not as well-known as Cannery Row, probably reveals more aboutthe author himself and, interestingly, about his love of boats. That book is The Log from The Sea of Cortez, theday-to-day story of the expedition. Simply put, it is a wonderful book forpeople who like to read beautiful English from the mind of a deep-thinkingphilosopher with a rare gift for explaining things simply and humorously.

Steinbeckdied in 1968 at the age of 66 but his books are still in print and I doubt theywill ever go out of print. Here is a small excerpt from The Log from the Sea of Cortez in which he illustrates the strangeidentification of Man with Boat:

"A man buildsthe best of himself into a boat — builds many of the unconscious memories ofhis ancestors. Once, passing the boat department of Macy's in New York, where thereare duck-boats and skiffs and little cruisers, one of the authors discoveredthat as he passed each hull he knocked on it sharply with his knuckles. Hewondered why he did it, and as wondered, he heard a knocking behind him, andanother man was rapping the hulls with hisknuckles, the same tempo — three sharp knocks on each hull. During an hour'sobservation there, no man or boy, and few women, passed who did not do the samething. Can this have been unconscious testing of the hulls? Many who passed couldnot have been in a boat, perhaps some of the little boys had never seen a boat,and yet everyone tested the hulls, knocked to see if they were sound, and didnot even know he was doing it.

"How deepthis thing must be . . . the boat designed through millenniums of trial anderror by the human consciousness, the boat which has no counterpart in natureunless it be a dry leaf fallen by accident in a stream. And Man receiving back from Boat a warping ofhis psyche so that the sight of a boat riding in the water clenches a fist ofemotion in his chest. A horse, a beautiful dog, arouses sometimes a quickemotion, but of inanimate things only a boat can do it . . . man, building this greatest and mostpersonal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, aman-shaped soul. His spirit and the tendrils of his feeling are so deep in aboat that the identification is complete. It is very easy to see why the Vikingwished his body to sail away in an unmanned ship, for neither could exist withoutthe other; or, failing that, how it was necessary that the things he lovedmost, his women and his ship, lie with him and thus keep closed the circle. Inthe great fire on the shore, all three started at least in the same direction,and in the gathered ashes who could say where man or woman stopped and shipbegan?"

Today's Thought

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle stillraise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

— JohnSteinbeck, Travels with Charley.

Tailpiece

"Hey,didn't I see you at the shrink's the other day?"
"Yeah,I'm having treatment for thinking I'm a racehorse."
"Sowhat's the treatment?"
"Oh, hegave me a big bottle of medicine."
"Howmuch do you take?"
"Dependswhether I want to win or just run a place."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

How power corrupts

2011-12-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

I CAN'T BEGIN TO COUNT how oftenI have heard the owner of an older displacement sailboat say: "I need morepower to fight the current. I need abigger engine."

Whenever I hear that, I know thisis not a true sailor talking. This is a land person, not a water person.

Land persons know about power incars. More power enables a car to go uphill faster. With enough power and low-downtorque, you don't even need to change down.

Land persons appear to equate aboat struggling against a current with a car going up a hill, which issomething a natural-born water person never does.

Water persons are blessed with anatural affinity for sensing the speed and direction of their craft. They can "feel"movement that they can't see. Something deep down inside tells them they're alsogoing sideways or even backwards when it looks as if they're going straightahead. They know without ever having tothink about it that the thin sheet of water they're sailing in is often movingwith respect to the ground beneath it because of a tidal stream or an oceancurrent.

They know when they are steamingupstream against an ebbing river that the current they're fighting is not thesame as a hill on a highway. Their speed through the water does not decline, asan underpowered car's does with respect to the road. It's the current that robsthem of speed over the ground, not the lack of engine power. Always presuming,of course, that the engine is capable of pushing the boat at hull speed.

A bigger engine is not going tohelp, unless it's a whole lot bigger, because it takes an enormous amount of extrapower to make a displacement hull exceed its hull speed by even a small amount.

This whole business seems to bequite difficult for land persons to comprehend, but I expect the manufacturers ofnew, more powerful engines are quite happy to let them remain ignorant. And the water persons are quite happy, too, knowingthat the land persons will always be the lubbers they suspected them to be.

Today'sThought

Ourknowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer, NYT 3 Dec 78

Tailpiece

"Hey buddy, I thought you had a date withthat blonde tonight."
"Yeah, I did."
"What happened?"
"Well, we went to her placeand sat around and chatted and then she put on some quiet music and changedinto her nightie and lay down on the sofa. Then she turned out the lights — soI came home. I can take a hint."

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The writing business

2011-12-11T19:11:00.001-08:00

The 15-foot Albacore

IWAS THINKING the other day about mankind's most desperate desire. I wasreminded that mankind's most compelling urge is not to make money, make war, ormake your neighbor sick with jealousy over your new sit-on lawn mower. It's notto romance your boss's wife or make a million on eBay. Mankind's most urgentdesire is to change what other people have written.

Iknow this because all my working life I have written words for money; and allmy life a certain species of human called a copy editor has pounced upon thosewords with glee and changed them, willy-nilly, without justification, and forno good reason whatsoever.

Itdoesn't matter what you write, or whether you're an amateur or a professional, somebodyalways wants to change it. Somebody always knows better. Somebody is alwaysready to believe you're an idiot who never learned no grammer and can't spell nohow.

Itwas with more than the usual trepidation, therefore, that I e-mailed my latestoffering to Joshua Colvin, editor of a nice little magazine called Small Craft Advisor. I have to admitthat Josh has always been kind to me. Unlike most other editors, he seems to beequipped with a heart. But this time I may have gone too far. I may have provokedhim.

Yousee, one of the things an editor likes most is to be told how many words aforthcoming article will contain. This is so that he can estimate the spaceneeded, and so plan a place for the article in his magazine. They're alwaysplanning, these people, and always having to re-plan at the last moment whentheir first plans don't work out.

Myoffering was a nice little story about a newly married couple here inBellingham, Wash., who spent their honeymoon sailing and rowing to Alaska in anopen, 15-foot Albacore racing dinghy. It took Michael Kleps, a practicingattorney, and his wife, Elizabeth MacDonald, a qualified commercial electrician,seven weeks to cruise the 900 miles to Juneau, sleeping almost every nightamong the bears and other wildlife in a small tent pitched on whatever wildernessspots of beach or rock they could manage to land on.

Thetrouble is that I told Josh rather brashly that I could squeeze the story into1,000 words. We professionals are good at stuff like that. That's why we areprofessionals.

SoI was at first astonished, then disbelieving, and then chagrined, when thelittle word-counter on my computer told me that the story had come out at 2,000words, not 1,000. Of course, you can't rely on word-counters too much. Theylie. I have often found that. So I counted the words myself. Er, yes. Twothousand. And no way could I shorten that article. Every word was golden, everyphrase a gem. Nothing was wasted or repeated.

So now I know Josh willhave to change it and squeeze 2,000 into the space he left for 1,000. The onlything that consoles me is the fact that this is a symbiotic relationship. It isthe job of a writer to pour out everything he haslearned. It is the job of the editor — nay, his primal urge, his greatestdelight — to change everything, to slash and cut and purge like Attila the Hun,leaving bleeding nouns and wounded adjectives littered all over the countrysideto die painful deaths.

Thisis how we live. This is how it has always been. Writers create. Editorsslaughter. It's too terrible for words.

PS: The sweet littleAlbacore is for sale in Juneau, Alaska, for $500. She's ready for the returntrip next summer. If you're interested, click on Comments below, leave a phonenumber or e-mail address, and I'll put you in touch. Your details won't bepublished.

Today's Thought

Thereason why so few good books are written, is that so few who can write knowanything.

—Bagehot, Literary Studies: Shakespeare

Tailpiece

Here’s a hint for beginning gardeners on how to distinguishweeds from proper plants:

Pull everything out. Those that come up again are weeds.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainlyabout Boats column.)

The island's lure: 3

2011-12-08T19:08:00.001-08:00

(HEREIS the third and final part of the story that started last Monday about asailboat trip my wife June and I did some years back in a Cape Dory 25D called Jabula. The article was first published in CruisingWorld magazine.)

The Lure of Vancouver Island: Part 3

WELEFT SEA OTTER COVE the next day in high spirits. The day was beautiful, with aclear blue sky and a calm sea. We were over the worst, and we could lookforward to two more weeks of exploring the five major inlets on VancouverIsland’s west coast.

Wesaw bears at Winter Harbour and Checleset Bay, and dozens of eagles fightinglike seagulls over scraps of salmon in Barkley Sound. In almost every littleanchorage we came to we were greeted by a bald eagle. We came across sea ottersin the remote Bunsby Islands, including one a mile out to sea that stayed fastasleep as we approached, and then peered at us quizzically through his flippersas we passed by. We greeted Gray whales and Humpbacks as if they were oldfriends.

Webathed in natural hot springs in Clayoquot Sound and rowed ashore on remoteislands to visit the sites of ancient Indian villages. We walked through denseold-growth forest on the untamed Brooks Peninsula to a sandy beach as white andpretty as we’d ever seen anywhere and sat to have sandwiches in the shade of agnarled madrona while green-blue water rushed in and out of a rocky cove belowus. Patches of soft grass spread over the rocks like blankets, and in everysheltered spot the ground bloomed with wild bluebells and buttercups.

Weran under jib only at three knots, dragging a lure to catch fish, and feastedlike royalty on grilled salmon and white wine in the warm cockpit.

Dayafter day, we worked our way south and east, occasionally finding another cruisingboat in a quiet anchorage and making new friends. In Barkley Sound we met upagain with Wind Song and Pyreneenne. We swapped yarns likelong-lost pals. Burl Romick of Wind Songgave us a bucket of oysters he’d gatheredin the nearby Brabant Islands, and Stuart Briscoe of Pyreneenne served up delicious gravlox they’d made from salmonthey’d caught.

Butour days in paradise were numbered. June had to get back to work, soreluctantly we set off on the long crossing to Neah Bay, Washington, across thewide mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Therewas a small-craft warning in effect, and it blew hard from the northwest thatafternoon. Little Jabulabroad-reached down the long swells, occasionally touching 7 knots, which madesteering very difficult. Tokoloshesurfed along quite happily at the end of a 75-foot painter that formed a loopand slowed it down when it started to run into us.

Formost of the day there was no sign of land ahead, but in the late afternoon weraised Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island. When the wind got up to about 30 knotsin the gusts, I dropped the mainsail, leaving the working jib in place. Ithardly made any difference to our speed, but it certainly made steering a loteasier.

Thetide turned a couple of hours before we reached Neah Bay. It started runningagainst the wind, which made the waves rough and steep-sided for our finalapproach. We were very glad when we eventually tied up in the Makah marina andcleared customs by phone. Cold and tired, we declined an invitation to drinkson another boat, had a supper of good, hot soup, and collapsed in our bunks.

Weran into patchy fog the next day, but when it cleared the rest was easy. Inbright sunshine, we motored non-stop over glassy swells to Bowman Bay, where wecrossed our outward track. Safely anchored in the beautiful state park justafter sundown, we celebrated Jabula’scircumnavigation of Vancouver Island with a good hot meal and drinks in thecockpit.

Nextday, as we were waiting for slack water at Deception Pass, two tugs came alongwith a huge log raft. They halted near us and I read their names--Vulcan and Snee-oosh.

“Youwon’t believe this,” I said to June, “but when I started out, right at thebeginning of the trip, these same two tugs were in exactly this same spot with alog raft, waiting for slack water in the pass.”

“Oh,I believe it,” said June. “It’s just another circle closing.”

Itwas a glorious day for our homecoming. We caught the new flood through the passand carried it all the way down the Saratoga Passage to our berth in Oak Harbormarina.

Therewe sat in the cockpit and looked at each other, listening to the engine idling:

Quite a trip, yes,quite a trip,

Saw the eagles, sawthe bears,

Saw the orcas, sawthe whales,

Saw the islands,saw some gales,

At four knots plus,all thanks to me,

Four knots plus,all thanks to me ...

Good to be back,good to rest

Good to be at homeat last ...

Good to be . . .

Ipulled the stop control out and the little Yanmar gurgled to a halt.

“Chattylittle guy,” I remarked. “But a bit swollen headed.”

“Hehas a right to be,” said June. “He’s a Vancouver Island vet now.”

Today's Thought

We are all sailors on the spaceship Earth.
—Frank Braynard.

Tailpiece

“Is it true that the troublewith this country is ignorance and apathy?”
“I don’t know — and what’smore I don’t give a damn.”

(Drop by every Monday,Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The island's lure: 2

2011-12-06T16:46:00.001-08:00

(HEREIS the continuation of the story that started last Monday about a sailboat tripmy wife June and I did some years back in a Cape Dory 25D called Jabula. The article was first published in CruisingWorld magazine.)

The Lure of Vancouver Island: Part 2

WE DUCKED INTO snug BullHarbour to wait for calm winds and a slack tide. There, in our northernmost anchorage,we joined three other bigger yachts intending to run down the west coast.

The northwester camerushing in over a low spit of land and whipped up the waters of the anchorage. Bentover against the wind, we walked along a little dirt road bounded by highhedgerows bursting with blackberries, salmonberries and strange berries we’dhave liked to taste but didn’t dare. We met a Native American man and requested,belatedly, permission to come ashore, for this is First Nations territory. Hesmiled and told us to make ourselves at home. We soon came to Roller Bay andwatched high surf storming in from thousands of miles of open Pacific, poundingthe shoreline and throwing up a thick salty haze. It was majestic, but a littlescary, too.

Back in the anchorage, wewere invited to join Burl and Abigail Romick aboard their C&C 35, Wind Song, for coffee after supper.Burl, a retired engineer from Portland, Oregon, asked: “Does your dinghy fit onboard?”

“No,” I said. “We’re goingto tow it.”

“Across Nahwitti Bar? Itcan get very rough.” The Romicks had been this way before.

“I have a secret weapon,”I said smugly. “You haven’t seen it yet.”

While I’d been waiting forJune to join me, I’d made a spray cover for Tokolosheout of a cheap blue poly tarp and a length of shock cord. It was the firstcover I’d ever made, and I’ll admit it was a bit short in the front and alittle lopsided, but it would surely keep the dinghy dry and buoyant even ifwaves rolled right over it.

I lay below wide awakethat night, listening to the wind howling in the rigging, and calculating my worryfactor by the number of flaps per second from the stern-mounted ensign. Flutter-flip-flip-flap-flap was bad. Igot up to check my anchor bearings, but the holding was good. We didn’t drag.

The gale lasted threedays. We rowed over to visit Stuart and Pip Briscoe aboard Pyreneenne, a 41-foot Jeanneau sloop from Sidney, B.C. They weresailing around the island with their daughters Kate, 7, and Lizzie, 3.

They’d been listening toreports from fishing boats at Cape Scott describing 12-foot seas.

“I don’t care, I’m leavingtomorrow, come hell or high water,” Stuart announced. He spoke in the desperatemanner of a man who’d been cooped up with bouncy kids for too long.

“So am I,” I said.

That evening, I tried Tokoloshe’s new spray cover. It wasdifficult to fit it from Jabula’scockpit. I stretched out and managed to roll the shock cord over Tokoloshe’s gunwale. I pulled the coverforward as far as it would go. I let the dinghy ride aft on the painter againand looked at my handiwork with some pride.

Then a heavy gust of windcame along. In the flicker of an eyelid, the two sides of the cover sprang upover the gunwales and contracted themselves into a fat sausage along Tokoloshe’s centerline.

June almost choked withlaughter. I could have bitten her.

I ripped off the cover andhurled it into Jabula’s cockpit. “Thedinghy will just have to take its chances,” I said grumpily.

That night, a change in windspeed woke me up. The ensign was lazily going kerflap ... pause ... kerflap. I turned over happily and went backto sleep.

The next morning was mistyand cold. As we approached Nahwitti Bar under mainsail and motor we could seebreaking water ahead--whitecaps on the top of standing waves. The current wasstill flowing seaward at about 4 knots, and we were soon sucked into it. For 45minutes, Jabula stood on her head inshort, steep seas. June chocked herself into a corner of the cockpit and clungon tightly.

A large fishing boat, adragger, passed us slowly to port, plunging her bows through the steep swellsrolling in from the Pacific, and sending heavy spray high over her bridge.

I didn’t dare look back asI wrestled with the tiller. “How’s the dinghy doing?” I asked June.

“Still afloat,” shereported. “Rolling like mad, but so far, so good.”

When we came to buoy “MA,”marking the end of the shallow bar, the seas gradually lengthened andflattened. We pulled Tokoloshealongside to bail it out. To our astonishment, it was almost bone dry.

“Doesn’t need a coverafter all,” I observed.

“Just as well,” said June,trying not to giggle.

The wind was fitful thatmorning and came at us from all directions as we motor-sailed slowly towardCape Scott against a 2-knot current. WindSong and Pyreneenne passed us atabout 1 p.m. and disappeared ahead, flying down the coast with the new ebb.

Strong currents seemed tochange direction every few minutes as we rounded Cape Scott at a respectabledistance. Although the weather was calm, the waters around the green-gray,sinister-looking cape were restless, sometimes rearing up suddenly as a swellrode in from seaward, then flattening out again in another swirl of current. Jabula’s constant tugs at the helm madesteering tiring, so June and I took one-hour shifts, anxiously watching the GPSand correcting all the time for sideways sets.

Then, to our great relief,we were free of the notorious cape and in deep water once again. We laid acourse for Sea Otter Cove, the first fully protected harbor down the coast.It’s only about nine miles from Cape Scott, but the going seemed very slow,perhaps because we were emotionally drained. The engine’s chattering becamemore obtrusive, specially as it seemed to be talking about us:

Suchfun today, such fun today,

Wecrossed a breaking bar today,
Wepassed a dangerous cape today,
Andthey were scared,
Theywere scared,
Icould tell, I could tell.
Notfar to go
Nowthankfully,
Notfar for them, not far for me . . .

It wasn’t far, but thelandfall was difficult. The entrance to Sea Otter Cove is very narrow andhidden among rugged islands, none of which look like their outlines on thechart. We couldn’t see any sign of the rock-and-reef-strewn entrance to thedeserted cove until we were within 100 yards of it.

But eventually we made ourway in and found ourselves in sole possession of a beautiful, perfectlyprotected bay fringed with evergreens and sandy beaches. We lay back withdrinks in the cockpit to soak up the evening sunshine. The sun was putting on a spectacular show of oranges and purples.

“This is simply gorgeous,”I said.

“It’s our reward for ahard day,” said June. “It’s always better when you’ve had to work for it.”

Tokoloshemisbehaved during the night, jamming the painter between the rudder and thekeel. For a while I feared I might have to dive into the icy water to free it,but I found to my great relief that I could pull the loose end through afteruntying the stopper knot. I tied Tokoloshefirmly alongside to stop any further nonsense.

Today's Thought

Lifeought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility willfertilize the soul.
— Rebecca West

Tailpiece

“Mommy, Mommy, come quick, there’s a spider as big as ahouse.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,Johnny, haven’t I told you 20 million times not to exaggerate?”

(Coming Friday: The third and finalepisode of The Lure of Vancouver Island)

The island's lure

2011-12-04T18:59:00.001-08:00

Our former 25-foot Cape Dory

THISIS THE TIME of the year when a handful of intrepid boaters in Washington stateand Oregon start planning for a summer circumnavigation of Vancouver Island.It's a big island, about 250 miles long, and it sits, beckoning, just over theU.S. border, separated from the Canadian mainland on the east by narrow,protected channels of salt water, and open on its untamed west side to theboisterous Pacific Ocean.

Notmany boats do the circumnavigation. It's more dangerous and more complicatedthan a trip up the Inside Passage to Alaska because of the lack of facilitieson the western coast and because the rugged coastline, exposed to swells with afetch of thousands of miles, and battered by long series of low-pressuresystems spinning down from the Gulf of Alaska, offers limited shelter and callsfor careful navigation.

Thecruising guides are full of warnings about the dangers involved for smallboats, but I have done the trip twice — a fact that reveals that anyone ofnormal intelligence (that is, somewhat more than mine) and boating skills iscapable of sailing around Vancouver Island. I'm sure a lot more sailors woulddo it, were it not for one thing: it takes time; and people are more wary thanever about taking time off from work in these days of economic uncertainty.

However,for those with the ambition and the time, I thought it might be useful if Irepeated an article I wrote for CruisingWorld magazine about 12 years ago. Nothing much has changed on the island,certainly on the western side, since then. Because the article is much longerthan my normal columns, I have split it up into three parts.

Hereis THE LURE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND Part 1:

TWOMILES OFF the deserted west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, thewind had died and the auxiliary engine was chattering away to itself as weheaded southeast in long low swells from astern.

“What’sit saying now?” I asked my wife, June. She’s my translator.

Wefirst learned about engine talk from Jonathan Raban’s book, Coasting. Raban, a famed Britishliterary author now living in Seattle, once sailed singlehanded around England.Whereas Raban’s engine lived deep in the boat beneath him, and sounded like “anindignant old fool, grumbling in the cellar,” our little Yanmar diesel was ababbler, a constant presence in the cockpit. Hunkered down right under ourfeet, it kept up a running commentary in a two-note baritone. Like a workmansettled in to a long job, it passed comments to while the time away, not muchimpressed by anything and not at all concerned about repeating itself.

Ihave never been able to understand it, but June can. She translated:

No whales thismorning,

No otters thismorning,

No sun thismorning,

Just gulls thismorning

And the ducks, andthe ducks

A few small ducks...

No whales thismorning . . .

Well,no exaggeration there. It had certainly been a quiet start to the day, the 34thday of our circumnavigation of the island aboard our Cape Dory 25D, Jabula. But many summer days in thePacific Northwest are like that.

Theystart off gray and cool, and then gradually keep on improving until they’rejust about perfect.

Andso it was with this day. Just an hour or so later, a big helicopter appearedover the land. We were astounded. The coast here was wilderness. We hadn’t seena plane, or even a car or truck, in a week. It landed on a beach, and then tookoff again, and circled, finally disappearing into the salt haze down the coast.We couldn’t begin to imagine what it was doing.

Andthat was just the start. Next, an eagle flew out from the land across our bow,straight out to sea, headed for goodness knows where. We’d never seen thathappen before.

Thenthere were whales, four or five Humpbacks inland of us, over to port, blowingand raising their flukes. One spyhopped for us and showed us his belly. Quite amorning for excitement, we thought.

Butit was all much the same to our cynical engine:

Helicopter,helicopter,

Eagle, eagle, eagle

And whales andwhales and whales,

Whales after allthis morning

But still no sun,still no sun . . .

“It'slike one of those people who like to verify the existence of things by sayingtheir names,” June explained.

“Ijust wish it would whisper, not shout,” I said.

“Nevermind,” said June. “Look — here comes the sun.”

VancouverIsland sticks out from mainland British Columbia like a detached right thumb.It runs southeast and northwest for about 250 nautical miles, and its westerncoast, wide open to the restless North Pacific, is one of North America’s lastwild frontiers. It’s almost all forest and mountain wilderness, with five majorindentations that form spectacular fjords, sounds, and bays filled withcountless little uninhabited islands. From white sandy beaches, steep mountainspush up high to a central, snowcapped ridge.

Veryfew roads penetrate the stark beauty of this deeply fissured wilderness. Thisis still the domain of the tall conifer and the sinuous madrona, the eagle, thebear, the salmon, the otter, and the orca.

Likemany other Puget Sound sailors, June and I were lured by this large island justacross the Canadian border. We found its appeal almost irresistible. But theclincher was that you could circumnavigate it. Circles have always fascinatedus. There’s something quite magical about setting out to explore new places,and traveling onward, ever onward, never passing the same place twice, and thenending up safe and sound at your starting point.

Weknew, however, that comparatively few yachts have sailed all the way around theisland. That fact first came to our attention when we saw advertisements inwhich a boat was referred to proudly as a “Vancouver Island vet,” and, in theshorthand of the yachting world, therefore presumably very seaworthy anddesirable.

Timeis a big problem for many people. You need six weeks or more to do the tripproperly. Thick coastal fog during the summer months is another problem. Andthen there are big tidal ranges, fast currents, whirlpools, narrows, races, andbars where the current reaches 8 knots or more.

There’salso Cape Scott, the bleak northwestern tip of the island. Currents flowingalong both sides of the island collide at Cape Scott and produce heavy seas andoverfalls dangerous to small craft when the wind opposes them. The cruisingguides aren’t encouraging. “It is reported that even in calm conditions seascan emerge seemingly from nowhere,” warns Robert Hale, publisher of thewell-respected Waggoner Cruising Guide.“Cape Scott’s seas have capsized and sunk substantial vessels. If you findyourself in trouble off Cape Scott, you are in trouble.” Another well-knownguide, Northwest Boat Travel, notesthat a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island is “a shorter trip than the InsidePassage to Skagway and Glacier Bay, Alaska, but in several ways more difficultand more dangerous.”

Inthe end, the lure of the island was too great. We had to go. We decided itwould be all right if we were very cautious.

Butthere was still the dinghy problem. Our dinghy, Tokoloshe, was an old 10-foot, fiberglass, outboard fishing skiff —a most unconventional dinghy for a 25-foot cruising sailboat. Nobody with anysense would tow a dinghy like that for 250 miles in the open Pacific. Or wouldthey? We didn’t have much option. It was our only dinghy, and it wouldn’t fiton board.

Andso, on an overcast morning in mid-June, I steered Jabula down the winding channel outside her home port of OakHarbor, Whidbey Island, headed for the Canadian border. For three weeks, Isinglehanded her north and west along the Inside Passage until June could flyup to join me at Port Hardy, the last vestige of civilization near VancouverIsland’s northernmost tip.

Wetopped up our stores and fuel in Port Hardy, and set out toward Cape Scott andthe wild west in a strong northwesterly wind that didn’t bode well for ourchances of crossing the Nahwitti Bar, another well advertised obstacle in ourpath. The bar is long and shallow, and the current runs at 5 1/2 knots,creating great heaping crests and breakers when the wind opposes the current .. .

(ComingWednesday: The Lure of Vancouver Island, Part 2)

Today'sThought

Adventureis the vitaminizing element in histories both individual and social.
WilliamBolitho, Twelve Against the Gods.

Tailpiece

Ithink, therefore I am. I am, therefore I sail. I sail, therefore I think I amcrazy.

(Dropby every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Let others win

2011-12-01T19:49:00.001-08:00

ONE MINUTEI'M BEMOANING the embarrassment of coming last in a yacht race, and the nextmoment I'm being admonished in print by a famous editor of 100 years ago. Lookat what just popped up in my reading matter; it's by Thomas Fleming Day, of The Rudder in 1911:

It is no use getting up races ifmen won't enter them. Many men plead the foolish reason for not entering thatthey cannot win. Is winning the sole incentive? I think not.

Thereis pleasure, there is experience, there are a hundred things to compensate theman who goes in like a sailor and a sport, and takes his boat over the course,win or lose. This is especially so in the long races over unfamiliar water, tonew ports, where you meet and make new friends.

Besides, do you owe nothing to the sport, or the club, or to yourcomrades, or to the stranger who comes to race under your flag? He at leastshould be given an opportunity to show what he can do against the best of yourfleet . . .

One way to get more entries is to give every finisher something to showthat he has been in the race. The best thing is a small bronze plate to screwup in his cabin. These can be had for a small sum, and are greatly appreciated,as they are an ever-present excuse for a yarn and a drink.

Also, more prizes should be offered; if seven start, at least threeprizes should be given, not necessarily expensive ones, but something. A prizeis a prize, no matter whether, second, or third.

It's extraordinary that Mr. Day should have anticipated my complaint 100years before I complained. Perhaps he was what they call prescient; or perhapssailboat skippers have always been the same.

I have certainly known men who completely destroyed local one-design racingclasses because they just kept winning and nobody else ever stood a real chanceof walking away with the top trophy. The perpetual losers just got thoroughlydiscouraged, sold their boats, and went looking for another class where theyhad a better chance; or else they bought boats that could be raced under ruleslike the CCA or IOR or PHRF, where a small bribe for the measurer might assureone of a more favorable handicap.

The message is quite plain. Even if winning is not the sole incentive, itis a mighty powerful encouragement tokeep racing, and if you wish to promote a healthy competitive class you mustconvince the perpetual winners to throw races occasionally, pour encourager les autres. Just letthem win a few minor races, and then suddenly astonish them with your skill andexpertise in the season's major final regatta. Yes, yes, I know it's sneaky,but it's for their own good, really.

Today'sThought

Virtue and cunning were endowments greater

Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.
—Shakespeare, Pericles.

Tailpiece

“My wife hasbeen using one of those flesh-reducing rollers for nearly six weeks now.”
“Oh yeah?Has she had any results?”
“Yes, theroller is much thinner.”

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

On coming last

2011-11-29T20:25:00.001-08:00

CAN THERE BEANYTHING WORSE than coming stone last in a sailboat race?

I hadfinished way down the list before in all sorts of boats from 30-Square Metersto sliding seat canoes, but never, ever,had I come last.

But there wewere on a perfectly normal day, a nice warm northeasterly blowing 10 to 15, notide to speak of, flat water in the protected bay and a decent start at the windwardend of the line — and everybody started to come past us.

It was thebrutal simplicity that attracted me to the Mirror class. My boat weighed a littleover 100 pounds, and there were hardly any strings to pull, just a gunter-riggedmainsail and a tiny jib with fixed fairleads.

What itboils down to in international one-design classes like this is the skill of thehelmsman and crew — basic human cunning,strategy, and experience. It's like across between chess and poker on water.

We hadalways done well before. Won the offshore series outright, in fact. Came secondin the nationals. Now this.

A boatskippered by a man we all called The Bumbling Idiot came up astern, thenpointed up unbelievably high and promptly started to overtake us towindward. I luffed him immediately, ofcourse. Pure reflex. He didn't respond.I hit the moron amidships and shouted "Go home!" He smiled and shouted, "It's OK, John,don't worry about it. Carry on. I won't protest."

HE wouldn'tprotest. For God's sake, HE wouldn't protest! I couldn't believe my ears. I couldn't believe my eyes, either. He wasdisappearing ahead of us.

They all camepast us on that first leg to windward, singly and in groups, going faster andpointing higher. The last one to overtake us was manned by two very large men,250-pounders at least. Their jib was sheeted so tight it couldn't possibly contributeto forward drive. Their mainsail was backwinding at the mast and flopping allover the place at the leech. And still they came past, foot-by-foot they camepast to leeward , two fat men laughing and chatting to each other and drinkingbeer out of tall cans, and when they hit our lee they simply bore off, gainedspeed, got ahead of us, and luffed up again to show us their transom.

By now,things were pretty desperate. "Sheet in the jib," I cried to mywide-eye crew. I slacked the mainsail until it, too, was flogging uselesslylike the one ahead of us. But nothinghelped. We fell farther back. We finished last, five minutes behind the boatahead, when the committee boat was already weighing anchor.

To mydismay, I never found out what went wrong that day. We checked the daggerboardand centerboard for plastic bags and seaweed. Nothing. The sails looked thesame as they always did. We weren'tcarrying any excess weight. It was a total mystery. For a long time I suspected the intervention of somesupernatural power. Maybe someone like The Bumbling Idiot had consulted a witchdoctorand put a spell on us.

But it neverhappened again, I'm happy to say. We eventually won the nationals, and TheBumbling Idiot became the Class Secretary and learned some of the basic rules about overtaking to windward,and best of all we never had to luff him again because he was always behind us.

Today'sThought

If you godirectly at the heart of a mystery, it ceases to be a mystery, and becomes onlya question of drainage.
—Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins.

Tailpiece

“I see yourhusband finally gave up smoking.”
“That’scorrect.”
“It musthave taken a lot of willpower.”
“Yes, I havea lot of willpower.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainlyabout Boats column.)

The overhead problem

2011-11-27T20:33:00.001-08:00

PEOPLECONTEMPLATING buying small sailboats often ask: "Is standing headroomnecessary?"

And myanswer to that has always been: "Necessary for what? Your question isincomplete."

As is thecase with most things to do with boats, it all depends. It depends on what youwant the boat for. At least, it mostly depends on that. If you're looking for aboat to live on, and entertain your friends, then of course you need headroom.What would your glittering dinner parties be without full standing headroom? How could anyone pass the Grey Poupon without dipping his tie in the pâté de foie gras?

But if you'rewanting a daysailer for pottering around the bay and picnics ashore, you don'tneed headroom. Unfortunately, though, these answers are often too simplistic becausenormally sane sailors sometimes fall prey to over-ambitious thoughts. "What if. . .?" thinks the owner of the 22-foot daysailer. "What if I wantedto sail her to Hawaii?"

I once owneda pretty Santana 22, one of Gary Mull's sweet little club-racing one-designs. Itarted her up and fitted her out for cruising, and told anyone who cared tolisten that she was now a sport cruiser, with a bow roller for the anchor, reefpoints in the jib, and a proper white-oak Samson post on the foredeck. Her sleeklines allowed only sitting headroom down below, of course, and then not eventhat when I made the mistake of replacing the old 3-inch foam settee cushionswith 4-inch ones. But my wife and I went exploring in her quite happily for weeks at a timefor several years. (Quite happily beinga comparative statement, youunderstand.)

The youngeryou are, the less need you feel for headroom. But even then, I have to admit,it was tedious down below at anchor in bad weather. There was a lot ofcrab-like shuffling when you wanted to move from one settee to the other.Cooking sitting down, facing sideways, was difficult, and trying to put yourjeans on required some rather ungraceful calisthenics. On many small sailboats there is also anoverhead problem in the head itself. Several manufacturers provide opening hatches above the toilet, so thatwhen you are ensconced on the throne to attend to your business you may stick your headup through the open hatch and survey the foredeck and the far horizon. This becomes interesting in crowdedanchorages in the early morning, when heads pop up all over, trying to lookinscrutable, avoiding each others' eyes and feigning interest in some far-off birdor animal. A few coarse old hands will inevitably have the nerve to wave and sayhello to friends straining nearby, but they always seem to be men. I've neverseen a woman with her head out of the hatch pretending to be checking theweather or looking for lost children.

People willtell you that headroom isn't important at sea. They say there isn't anyheadroom anyway when the boat's heeled over and you are stretched outsideways. But I don't believe it. I findit even more difficult to move around in a heeled boat without headroom. Youhave to scrabble around like a spider in a bathtub.

Headroom isnot needed for seaworthiness, nor for speed, of course. And it's questionablewhether it's necessary for safety. But it's certainly needed for comfort, andthe lack of it can limit the duration of your marriage. So my advice is to put up with lack ofheadroom in small boats that perform well under sail. Go ahead and sacrifice headroom for looks andsailing thrills. Above all, don't buy a small boat with an ugly, unseaworthyhump of a cabintop added simply to gain standing headroom.

But if youreally must have headroom because you feel life just isn't worthwhile without it,the answer comes down to money. Buy a bigger boat. Something around 25 or 27feet will do it, unless you make your money by playing basketball, in whichcase you might need to start at 35 feet and work upward.

Today's Thought

If you need to stand up, go on deck.
— Uffa Fox

Tailpiece

“Doc, mystomach hurts.”
“Let’s see... hmmm, yes, you’ll have to diet.”
“What color,doc?”

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After-dinner thoughts

2011-11-24T20:16:00.001-08:00

WHEN YOU'RE STRETCHED OUT on the couch after your Thanksgiving dinner,and all your blood has rushed to your stomach to sate itself upon the newlyarrived turkey and cranberry sauce, your mind does strange things. Mine asks:"How has evolution affected boats sailed for pleasure?"
    This is not the time for such questions, of course, but the mind isstrangely insistent. "Are they any better than their predecessors?"it wants to know. "Is Nature on the right track?"
    Well, a few days ago I was reading a Patrick O'Brian novel in which Dr.Maturin comes across a very rare butterfly whose normal markings are completelyreversed. This is how evolution works. It occurs with diversions from the norm.Genetic mistakes, in other words. And if the mistake works better, it becomesthe new norm. If it's no good, the new species dies out. In nature,"good" refers to the ability of something to reproduce itself, and toeat other things in the food chain, and the ability to rise in the food chain.Or, in the case of plants, the ability to smother your neighbors, to stealtheir food in the ground, and their sunlight.
    In the butterfly's case, it was immediately pounced upon by Dr. Maturinbecause of its rarity. ("Oh well," Nature sighs with a shrug of hershapely shoulders. "That didn't work. Too bad. Let's try something else.")
    So how do yachts fit in here? In theory, bad yachts will sink and removethemselves from the gene pool. Or they will be so slow and clumsy to windwardthat their owners will take an ax and chop them to bits.
    Butwhat distinguishes a good sailboat from a bad one? I can think of seven areas:ease of handling, seaworthiness, comfortable accommodation, seakindliness,speed, weatherliness, and affordability.
ØEaseof handling? Lighter, stronger fabrics for sails and lines have made handlingeasier (along with fancier winches and line stoppers).
ØSeaworthiness?I'd call it a slight improvement.
ØAccommodation?Definitely better.
ØSeakindliness?Probably no improvement on the whole.
ØSpeed?If we leave aside the ultra-lights and multihulls, perhaps just a littleimprovement.
ØWeatherliness?Much better, through rig and keel design, and better sails.
ØAffordability?Yes, more affordable now because of mass production.
    SoI think we have to agree that on the whole sailboats have indeed evolved forthe better. They're living longer, too. Fiberglass is turning out to have avery long life, despite a few outbreaks of bottom pox here and there.
    (Okay, brain? Thatenough for you? Can I have my snooze now?)

Today'sThought
I have called this principle, by which each slightvariation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.

Tailpiece
Blessedare the pure in mind, for they shall inhibit the earth.

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Giving thanks for boats

2011-11-22T20:38:00.001-08:00

WELL, HERE IT IS, coming up to the end of November, and what is thereto be thankful for? The usual, I guess. Wives. Husbands. Turkeys. Beer.Football. Television. And boats. Ah yes, boats.

When I was rummaging around in a 100-year-old copy of The Rudder magazine recently I came across a delightful littlepaean to the sailing ship. It was written by the editor, Thomas Fleming Day,and it was naturally a little one-sided and biased — faults totally eclipsed bythe man's passion and his command of the language. I think it ought to beinscribed on a bronze plaque and put on display in a prominent pace to remindeverybody, not just the sailors among us but everybody, of what we have lost,and what still remains that we can be thankful for. But judge for yourself:

"Unquestionably the sailing vessel is the most majestic andperfect creation of man. It above all his works embodies those perfections ofdetail which, taken as a whole, form a beautiful and inspiring object. He hasnever wrought in any other line a fabric which in its actions so mimics thegraceful and delighting movements of a symmetrical and buoyant living thing. Itseems to embody the very spirit of enterprise that created it. It confersbeauty upon the element that it traverses and takes from every change of theseam sky and air a fresh grace and a more enchanting appearance. And when werealize what it has done for mankind: how in the shadow of its sails empirehave sprung up and grown to greatness, how cities have flourished, races beennourished and houses in plenty and splendor; how it broadened the world only tobring its widely parted lands closer together, binding all in the golden bandsof trade. When we recall who have trod the decks of these ships, who built,navigated and fought them, the master men of the ages, the welders and shapersof our present civilization. Thinking of these things we cannot but regret thepassing of the sailing ship."

To which I can only add, 100 years later, that ships under sail stillhave not completely passed away, especially small ones, and for that we shouldbe truly grateful.

Today's Thought

All progress is based upon a universalinnate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
— SamuelButler

Tailpiece
A Seattle sailor has invented a combined corkscrew, canopener, and bottle opener. It saves losing them overboard separately.

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Engines of a by-gone era

2011-11-20T17:09:00.001-08:00

From The Rudder, 1911

ONE HUNDREDYEARS AGO, when Thomas Fleming Day was the renowned editor of the equallyrenowned yachting magazine, The Rudder,there was a lot of interest in maritime engines for launches and sailboats.

Internal-combustionengines for yachts were still in the early stages of development in those days,of course, and manufacturers were springing up all over the place. There wereliterally scores of different makes of yacht engines to choose from. They weren'tshy about proclaiming the merits of their wares, either. It's fascinating toread some of the claims they made.

Here are thetexts of two advertisements from a 1911 copy of The Rudder:

u SPEEDWAY GASOLENE ENGINES

No materialpurchased is too good, no workman is too expert, and no improvement device istoo small, not to be utilized in building.

The engineis the heart of the launch, and heart disease in Motor Boats is most frequent,insidious and ofttimes appalling.

In owning aSpeedway Engine, you fortify yourself with reasonable insurance against themalady, and

WE CAN PROVEIT

(Gas Engineand Power Co. and Charles L. Seabury & Co., Morris Heights, New York City)

uLAMB ENGINES

("It Always Goes and Keeps Going untilI Stop It")

(They) AreIdeal Yacht Engines

They aresilent and powerful in operation and one of the surest and simplest engines tostart and run.

While somemen enjoy hearing the trip of steel rods, the snap of springs and cams, thesmell of burning oil and grease--to one not accustomed to a roaring racket ittakes all the pleasure out of cruising.

Thenerve-racking moving parts have been eliminated in the LAMB--that's why it isan ideal yacht engine.

The absence of noisy or exposed movingparts is a revelation to many present engine users.

(LambBoat and Engine Company, Clinton, Iowa/Lamb Engine Company of New York)

Today'sThought

Progress isthe mother of problems.

— G. K.Chesterton

Tailpiece

Moresporting definitions:

Sumowrestling: Survival of the fattest.

Fishing: Theeternal try-angle.

Fencing:Getting a sword in edgeways.

Golf: Teefor two.

Surfing: Aloaf on the ocean wave.

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All about props

2011-11-17T19:59:00.001-08:00

NOW THAT WINTER is nearly upon us and the water is gettingcolder, Old Wotsisname is asking every passerby whether he should reduce thesize of his prop. This is typical OW. He's just showing off. He wants people toknow how clever he is. He read somewhere that because colder water is denser,propeller diameter should be reduced about 1 percent for every 10°F drop inwater temperature, based on a"normal" of 70°F.

I believe this is true. I also read it somewhere. In one ofmy own reference books, actually. But I don't go around shouting about it. Mynatural modesty forbids it. However, there's no doubt that many sailors show aserious interest in propellers and many of them go to great lengths to matchtheir propellers to their engines for maximum efficiency and miles per gallon.

If you're one of them, you might be interested in some morepropeller bric-a-brac I've collected over a lifetime of frustrating engagementswith marine engines and propulsion systems:

ØIncreased diameter absorbs more power than increased pitch.

ØA decrease of 1 inch in propeller diameter will increase propeller rpm by about300.

ØA decrease of one inch in pitch is good for an increase of propeller rpm ofabout 200.

ØOn auxiliary sailboats, the minimum clearance round the tips of the propellerblades is 10 percent of the propeller diameter.

ØPowerboats need 20 percent or more clearance to avoid vibration.

ØAfter installing a propeller on a shaft, the thinner lock nut should be put onfirst. This allows the larger nut, with more thread area, to assume the loadwhen it is tightened up against the thin lock nut.

ØFor the greatest efficiency, the pitch-to-diameter ratio should be less than1.4 : 1, except on high-speed boats doing 35 knots plus.

ØA large-diameter propeller is always more efficient than a smaller one, excepton boats designed for continuous operation at 35 knots or more.

ØThere is disagreement about whether to allow a sailboat's prop to spin whenyou're under sail only. New York naval architect Dave Gerr says a prop createsless drag when it's free to rotate. British author Eric Hiscock says theopposite: "Experiments made by P. Newall Petticrow Ltd. have shown that a2- or 3-bladed propeller offers less drag when it is locked than when it isfree to spin, and that the drag of a spinning propeller is greatest at about100 rpm." Another renowned American naval architect, Francis S. Kinney,agrees with Hiscock.

I myself think it varies from boat to boat, and all you haveto do is anchor in a current, attach a fishing scale to your rode, and put the(non-running) engine in and out of gear. (I also have a theory concerning rotorblades on a falling helicopter, which definitely encounter more drag whenrotating than when locked, but it proved highly controversial and caused muchill feeling and backbiting on one bulletin board; so I won't dwell on it here.)

Today's Thought

It is the darling delusion of mankind that the world isprogressive in religion, toleration, freedom, as it is progressive in machinery.

— Moncure D. Conway, Dogma and Science.

Tailpiece

Some sporting definitions:

Greyhound racing: The curs of the working classes.
Table tennis: The sport of pings.
Polo: Jockey hockey.
Weightlifting: Careless rupture.
Bull-fighting: He who hesitates is tossed.

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Damp conversation

2011-11-15T21:13:00.001-08:00

I NOTE WITHCONSIDERABLE INTEREST that there is now a handheld VHF radio that moves andshakes when it gets wet, like a shaggy sheepdog flinging spray everywhere aftera swim.

It's an Icom,listed in the West Marine catalog, and it apparently has what's known as anAquaQuake water-draining function. I don't know how it senses that its speakeris waterlogged, but when it does, it shakes, rattles, and rolls until the waterhas been expelled, so that the glug-glug-glug of the Coast Guard on Channel 16,ordering you to heave to for potty inspection, comes through loud and clearagain.

It would benice to have a shivering radio like that, if only to impress my friends. Verylittle has evolved in the world of handheld VHF radios since DSC sneaked intooperation, and that turned out to be more fanfare than practical use.

Not muchfanfare has accompanied the introduction of the AquaQuake, but its significanceshould not be lost on amateur sailors. This is s radio that moves when it getswet. It first thinks about things.And then it acts. It shudders until things come right again.

    What nextmight we expect in the line of electronic surprises like that? Could there be akettle that will put itself on for tea while I furl the mainsail, or, moremuscularly, a mast that will furl the mainsail while I put on the kettle fortea?
   I know thereare already electric furlers and winches, but the point is they don't think forthemselves. How about an anchor that winches itself up when it feels itselfdragging, and resets itself without waking you up? How about binoculars thatautomatically focus on the yacht where the blonde lady with the long tan legsis obviously bored and looking for lively company? And binoculars thatautomatically take the shake out of your hand?
   Yes, yes, Iknow you can get binoculars that do away with a normal, everyday kind of shake,but this is a different kind of shake, an emotional sort of shake, a shake ofanticipatory excitement that only special binoculars with testosterone sensors could cure.

Won't needany for myself, of course. Spoken for, lo these many years. I'm just thinkingabout you youngsters. No, no need to thank me. Always willing to help where Ican.

Today's Thought

Women give us solace, but if it werenot for women we should never need solace.

— Don Herold

Tailpiece

“Have you recently seen a man with one eye named Gustav?”
“I’m not sure. What’s his other eye called?”
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Not tonight, Josephine

2011-11-13T19:38:00.001-08:00

I WAS THUMBING through a sailing magazine yesterday, looking atpictures of boats for sale, when I came across a pretty little Freedom 21dancing among lively waves in a freshbreeze.
   She was advertised as asinglehanded catboat, owned by a devoted meticulous owner, and "incrediblyupgraded." If you needed toestablish just how incredibly she had been upgraded, you were referred to awebsite that presumably would supply you with all the fascinating details.
   All you had to do was read theaddress of the website from the printed advertisement, type it into the addressbox of your computer's browser and click on "Go!" (Or an arrow orsomething. You know your browser better than I do.)
  All you had to do ... yeah, right. Here's the address of thatwebsite:https//picasaweb.google.comHJRCMMBlueRavenFREEDOM211984CatBoatFORSALE?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCObUk8Tcp8fI4gE&feat=directlink
   I think you have to be prettydesperate to find out more about this boat to try to enter that in your addressbox, specially if you're a hunt-and-peck typist like me. Is this what thedigital age has brought us to? Is this some kind of test of your eye/fingerco-ordination, or a test of your powers of your patience and comprehension thatyou must pass before you can make a bid on this boat and become its new owner?
   In passing, I must note thatthe magazine charges $21 for 30 words or less for these classified ads. What Iwant to know is this: Is that website address counted as just one word? If not,how do they break it up?
   But the real point is that wehave become so used to pointing and clicking to get the information we needfrom the internet that we have become quite spoiled. I can't imagine anyonegoing to the trouble to type that longwinded address into a browser unless theywere absolutely desperate, really desperate, to know more.
   The art of advertising, as Iunderstand it, is to snag the interest of the casual passerby who would neverhave dreamed of buying a Freedom21, and to excite a positive lust forpossession that can only be satisfied by drawing out a checkbook and signingyour name.
     I'm afraid this ad excitesno such lust in me. Not tonight, thank you Josephine. Typing long websiteaddresses gives me a headache.

Today's Thought

Advertising may be described at the science of arrestinghuman intelligence long enough to get money from it.
— Stephen Leacock

Dekker in Durban

By e-mail from Chris Sutton, my man in South Africa:
"A veritablearmada of internationals has arrived in Durban. Many are slightly shellshockedby having to change their plans from transiting the Suez to the Cape of GoodHope. Hopefully they will enjoy South Africa and its attractions.
"Laura Dekker,the 16-year-old Dutch girl arrived last week. I spoke to her yesterday when Iwent down to do some work on my boat. I asked her if she needed assistance withanything and all she wanted was to know where the nearest laundromat is. I didn'tspend long enough with her to get much of an impression, other than that Laurais very self-assured and seems to be enjoying herself."

* Well, I'm glad tohear Ms Dekker heeded my advice not to take the Red Sea route. She'll be muchmore at home going around the Cape, and much safer, at least as far as piracyis concerned. They also speak English in South Africa. Dutch, too. Sort of.

Tailpiece

“I hope I didn’t say anything in my sermon to offend your husband, Mrs.Smith.”
“Oh no, you mustn’t pay any attention to him. He’s been a sleepwalkersince he was kid.”

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Laura's stowaways

2011-11-10T20:18:00.001-08:00

WHAT A SURPRISE for young Laura Dekkerat sea between Australia and Africa: she discovered an infestation of ants onboard. She says they came aboard in Darwin, Australia.
  Laura, who is chasing the record for the youngest solo circumnavigator,is probably right about that. You can always tell Ozzie ants. They're the oneswho line up, hold hands, and sing Waltzing Matilda when you take down theensign at sunset. Like most Ozzies they are charming in their way and not atall reticent about expressing their views.
  Interestingly, they all disappeared for several days when Laura's boathit rough weather. But when the wind and swells died down, "they camecrawling out of hiding from every hole and crack imaginable," she wrote inher daily blog. "I find them in the most unusual places, like on my computerkeyboard or on my maps ... Argh!"
  Argh, indeed. There is little more disturbing to the human stomach thanthe sight of hundreds of seasick ants throwing up all over the place. I don'tknow how she survived.
  And I don't doubt that when those ants recovered from seasickness thefirst thing they did was to send scouts out searching for the grog locker. Ihope that Laura has one, and is willing to share. In the first place, Ozzieants can be a dangerously surly lot when deprived of alcohol for more than twohours. Secondly, there is not a lot to fear from drunken ants, even if they endup in a riotous brawl, and it's better by far to be shipmates with happy antsthan with spiteful ones just waiting to nip you in the billabong when youaren't looking.
  Finally, I must admit to one niggling fear: can Laura's claim to arecord be in jeopardy? I mean, she's supposed to be sailing solo — and hereshe's openly admitting that she has hundreds of stowaways on board. I'm glad Idon't have to be the judge of that.

Today's Thought

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; considerher ways, and be wise.
— Old Testament: Proverbs, vi, 6.

Tailpiece

Onlysome of us can learn from other people’s mistakes.
Therest of us have to be the other people.

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Allowing for leeway

2011-11-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

I SOMETIMES WONDER how many of the sailboat skippers I see blithely cruisingamong the San Juan Islands are making any allowance for leeway. If you don'tmake any allowance, there can be a surprising difference between your chosen arrivalpoint and the actual place where you end up. And that's even without taking thetidal current into account.
Leeway is sideways drift, ofcourse, caused by the wind hitting the side of the boat and sails. All boatsmake leeway to some degree on all courses except two: when the wind is eitherdead ahead or dead astern.
You can assume that aclose-hauled sailboat will make between 3 and 5 degrees of leeway in a 7-knotbreeze, and 8 degrees or even more in 20 knots. So, if you want to maintain a setcourse over the ground, to avoid reefs and rocks, you must head your boattoward the wind to offset leeway.
   It's not always easy toestimate how much leeway you're making, but you'll get a fair idea if you lookaft along the centerline of the boat and compare that imaginary line with theline of the wake. If you have a hand bearing compass it will give you thedifference in degrees, so you'll know how much correction to apply next time.
   Powerboats often make moreleeway than sailboats because they present a greater area of topsides to thewind, compared with the amount of hull under water. But it doesn't affect theircourse over the ground so much because the sideways component is mostly a smallpercentage of the powerboat's forward speed.
   In any case, it's wise to beaware of leeway because it means your boat is not actually going in the samedirection she's pointing at. It's not at all obvious, but she's actuallycrabbing along to leeward, and if you don't compensate by pointing higher, youmight be in for a nasty surprise.

Today's Thought

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
— Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil.

Tailpiece

Little shots of whisky

Little drops of gin
Make a lady wonder
Where the hell she’s bin.

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Gas or diesel?

2011-11-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

IS IT WORTH buying a new auxiliary engine for your good old boat? Orshould you just put up with the constant need for spares (if you can get them)and ever-more-costly repairs? And if youbuy a new engine, should it be gasoline or diesel?
   Well, the average gasolineboat engine runs for 1,500 hours before needing a major overhaul. The averagediesel engine runs for something approaching 5,000 hours under the sameconditions — that us, roughly three times as long.
   Of course these are verygeneral rules of thumb because the life of an engine depends on how it's used,abused, and maintained. But I should add that these estimates come from a manwhose full-time job it has been for many years to persuade boaters to replaceailing used engines with new ones.
   Cynically, therefore, we mayassume that his figures concerning the life of engines are a littleconservative. According to the same man, the typical gasoline boat engine getsa "good" 1,000 hours of operation. During the next 500 hours, minortroubles become increasingly likely, turning into major troubles as the1,500-hour mark approaches.
   It's interesting to note thatan automobile engine runs an average of about 3,000 hours — about double therunning time of of a gasoline boat engine — before requiring an overhaul at100,000 miles. But most of the time, boat engines work harder than do carengines, and under worse conditions.
   A well-maintained gasolineboat engine run under the best conditions might indeed run for more than 1,500hours without a major overhaul, but many will get fewer hours than that becauseof the atrocious conditions they suffer — salt air, damp bilges, intermittentoperation, and all too often, pure neglect.
   Diesel engines are built moreheavily, and to finer tolerances, than are gasoline engines. They thus acceptmore abuse and often deliver 8,000 hours of hard work in fishing boats before requiring major surgery.At this rate, in theory, a well-maintained diesel auxiliary will last the lifeof the boat, because the average boat owner logs 200 engine hours a year.
Unfortunately, in practicethings are rather different. Engines like to run long and steadily. The shorterthe running time between stops, and the longer the idle time between runs, thefewer the hours they deliver before needing to be carted off to the engine emergencyroom.

Today's Thought

Life too often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than ofgoods.
-- C. C. Colton, Lacon

Tailpiece

“What jobs are hippies best fit for?”
“Holding on your leggies.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boatscolumn.)

Dump that roach

2011-11-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

ONE OF THEPEOPLE I taught to sail once asked: "Why do mainsails have battens whenforesails don't?"

I replied with the shocking truth. "Tomake more money for sailmakers," I said.

   The fact is, you don't need battens in amainsail. You only need battens if the sail has a roach. So what's a roach?Well, if you draw an imaginary straight line from the masthead to the outer endof the boom, any sail area that protrudes aft of that line is a roach. And theproblem with a roach is that it's floppy. It has to be kept in line with therest of the mainsail by stiff battens of wood or plastic, otherwise it will dono work, flap in a breeze, and generally drive you crazy.
   But it's not necessary to have a roach. Yourjib or genoa works perfectly well without a roach. It has a slight scoop in theopposite direction, as a matter of fact. It's what's known as a hollow leech. So why don't mainsails have hollowleeches? Well, some do, actually, andthey're usually found on cruising boats. Racing boats have roaches because theywant that extra sail area up high where the wind blows harder, and they benefitmostly from the roach when they're sailing off the wind.
   But there are good reasons why you shouldn'thave a roach. It's not needed when you're beating because the great majority ofthe sail's lift then is generated at its leading edge, the strip next to themast. And boats that generate weather helm on the beat will positively benefitfrom losing some sail area so far aft. They will not suffer at all from havingno roach and no battens.
   But most sailmakers are driven by racingboats and racing rules, which also affect the design of cruising hulls, ofcourse. So the great majority of coastal and deep-sea cruisers end up withbattens in their mainsails simply because it's de rigeur for racers.
   Sailmakers confirm that battens addconsiderably to the maintenance costs of any sail. Short battens crease andbend the cloth just forward of the pocket, where persistent chafe and flexingwear out the sailcloth. Full-length battens, besides adding considerably to thecost of a mainsail, put considerable stress on the leech and luff ends of theirpockets.
    It'seasier to handle, stow, and bag a hollow-cut mainsail, and you don't have toworry about the roach clearing the backstay when you jibe. Next time you're considering a new mainsail,give some serious thought to dumping the roach. Your sailmaker might have moredifficulty making his Mercedes payment, but you won't be sorry.

Today'sThought

Cut yourcloth, sir, according to your calling.
— Beaumontand Fletcher, The Beggar's Bush

Tailpiece

“Waiter, doyou serve crabs here?”
“Sit downbuddy, we serve anyone.”

(Drop byevery Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Tuning the rig

2011-11-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

EVERY YEAR toward the end of the sailing season Old Wotsisname makesthe same request. He wants to borrow my Loos tension gauges. After twelvemonths of straining to keep his masts upright, his shrouds and stays havestretched somewhat, and he wants to set about screwing up the turnbuckles tothe correct tension.
Now, while I admit I don't like lending my best tools, I'm not a totalcurmudgeon about it. I do lend my expensive gauges to OW, and I do eventuallyget them back after I've nagged a few times. But there has to be a limit. Why should I be the perpetual sucker? Howmany years is this going to go on?

Perhaps not many more. I have found a method of tensioning a sailboat'sstanding rigging that doesn't need gauges. It may well take a few years to soakinto OW's rather dense gray matter, but there is hope on the horizon.

It's a convenient fact that that the elastic stretch of stainless-steelwire increases in rough linear proportion to the load, up to about half of thewire's breaking strength. Therefore, stretch is a good indication of load.

In fact, when a 33-foot-long 1 x 19 wire (of any thickness) is loadedto half its breaking strength, it will stretch 2 inches. Little wonder, then,that the leeward shrouds sometimes look a little slack.

Nevertheless, you can use this principle to tune your rig. Here's how:

Take all the load off a wire and mark on it as accurately as possiblewith tape or a marking pen a length of 1,980 mm. Do this anywhere along the wire, where it'smost convenient.

Now tighten the turnbuckle and measure the length again as you do so.You will find that every extra millimeter of stretch (up and above 1,980 mm)induces a load in the wire of 5 percent of its breaking strength. In other words, an increase of 2 mm, with aspace between your marks now of 1,982 mm, indicates a 10 percent load.

You can find out the breaking strength of the wire from themanufacturer's or retailer's catalog, and from that you can calculate the loadin actual pounds or kilograms if you like. But it's just as easy to reckon thata moderate pre-load for the average rig is about 25 percent of the breakingstrength. In which, case, you need tostretch your marked length by 5 mm to 1,985 mm.

That's it. All you need is atape marked in millimeters. I think I'm going to have to buy one for OldWotsisname.

Today's Thought

Often ornateness goes with greatness;

Oftener felicity comes of simplicity.

— William Watson, Art Maxims.

Tailpiece

“Doctor, I think I’ve got water on the knee.”

“No problem, I’ll just give it a tap.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boatscolumn.)

Simple safety

2011-10-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

IT CAN BE QUITE A SURPRISE to see how much safety gear there is aboard some sailboats, and how little aboard others. A lot of it has to do with the owner's philosophy.

During the 1950s, when men such as Marcel Bardiaux and Bernard Moitessier were sailing around the world singlehanded, they spurned even such elementary safety features as stanchions and lifelines.

"They give you a false sense of security," Moitessier once told me. "They catch you below the hip. They can catapult you overboard. Better to learn to cling like a monkey, like me."

Times have changed, of course. There's a lot more nagging now from the people who are trying to save you from yourself and your obviously suicidal ways. It's difficult now to find a boat that doesn't have lifelines.

But the old spirit hasn't entirely vanished. And some of the safest boats have the simplest equipment. It is, however, combined with a thorough knowledge of how to use it should the need arise. After all, it's pretty pointless to own thousands of dollars-worth of lifesaving gear if you and your crew haven't practiced using it.

You should be very cautious, though, when choosing safety equipment. Safety is an emotional subject and manufacturers trade on it. Promise yourself that you will not buy anything you couldn't handle in pitch darkness in a heaving sea on a stormy night.

So what do you really need? You'll have to choose for yourself, of course, since it depends on the boat, the crew, and where you intend to sail. But here are five areas you should consider when the subject comes up. Think hard about each of them and buy the simplest, sturdiest gear that fills the bill:

1. Equipment that will keep you on board.

2. Gear to save you if you fall overboard.

3. Equipment to keep the boat safe (including a reliable engine and sturdy anchor tackle).

4. Gear to attract help if you get into trouble, and

5. Equipment to save you if your boat sinks.

Today's Thought

Rashness brings success to few, misfortune to many.

— Phædrus, Fables.

Tailpiece

“What happened to your leg?”
“Broke it jumping over the net.”
“But isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in tennis?”
“Apparently not if it’s table tennis.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Apparent wind dilemma

2011-10-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

THE APPARENT WIND has been an abiding puzzle for me. In my racing days, especially in one-design dinghies, I was never sure about the best way to go to windward. That is, whether I should pinch or foot.

What always made the decision difficult was the simple fact that the faster you go, the more the apparent wind comes from ahead. And the more the wind draws ahead, the more you have to pull off to compensate, and the faster you go. Conversely, the slower you go, the higher you can point.

It's all very well going as fast as you can, but when the boats around you are going slower but pointing higher, you get a gut feeling about velocity made good, that is, the real progress you are making toward the windward mark. Actually, it's not your gut that does the feeling. It's your brain, but for some reason it manifests itself in your gut.

Your brain says to your gut: "He's mad. Tell him to point up. He'll get to the mark much quicker if he goes slower but points higher." The gut says to the brain, "No, no, the plan is to take the slightly longer route, not point so high but go faster. Cover more ground more quickly."

"Won't work," says the brain. "He always does this, and never wins. He is the epitome of hope ignoring reality. Doesn't bitter experience tell him anything?"

"Don't ask me," says the gut. "I'm just the messenger. I didn't volunteer for this job and I don't get paid for it."

And then, just to confuse the issue, a freeing gust comes along, and naturally I am able to point up. So I do. Can't help myself. But at the same time the boat speeds up, so the apparent wind hauls more ahead, and I have to pull off some more to keep the jib filled. Back to square one.

Meanwhile, the other boats that were pointing up all the time still seem to be pointing higher than me. I ask the crew (my wife) in a perfectly calm voice to make sure the jib is sheeted in as far as it will go, because I don't seem to be able to point properly. And to do it rather quickly if she doesn't mind. She says: "If you scream at me once more I'm going to jump overboard."

So I don't have much choice, really. What it comes down to is that I have to point lower than the others AND go slower than them, too. It's the usual recipe for disaster. VMG gone to hell. Crew grinding her teeth and not speaking to me. The fleet disappearing ahead. And it's all the fault of that damn mysterious apparent wind. Again.

Today's Thought
The way of the Wind is a strange, wild way.
— Ingram Crockett, The Wind.

Tailpiece
"Doctor! Doctor! Help me! I think I'm shrinking!"
"Now calm down, Mr Jones, there's nothing to be done. You'll just have to be a little patient."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Your own best lifeboat

2011-10-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

A READER who is planning to go solo world cruising in a 28-foot sloop wants to know if she really needs a dedicated life raft. "I really don't have space for one," she says, "and I can't actually afford one anyhow. I am considering carrying a half-inflated inflatable dinghy on deck and keeping a well-stocked grab-bag down below — within arm's reach of the cockpit. Do you think this is irresponsible?"

No ma'am, I don't. I have grave doubts about the usefulness of life rafts on small sailboats. I once edited a book about a large storm off New Zealand that caused havoc among a fleet of yachts heading north, and the only deaths involved a family that took to their life raft. They were never seen again. All the yachts survived, even though some were abandoned when their crews were taken aboard rescue boats.

The committee that investigated the famous Fastnet Race disaster was very critical of the value of life rafts in storm-force winds and seas. Time after time I have read about sailboats whose exhausted crews called for help because they thought their boats were sinking — only to discover days or weeks later that the yachts were still afloat. Half-filled with water mostly (or more) but still floating, still salvageable, and still affording shelter.

This has led me to the belief that most cruising boats are their own best lifeboats.

There should be a watertight bulkhead up forward, of course, in case of collisions, and you should carry spares for a jury rig — plenty of wire rope and clamps, and as many whisker poles and spinnaker poles as you can find room for. You may need a way to make an emergency rudder. How about a spinnaker pole and that nicely varnished locker door?

Two bilge pumps are the minimum, at least one of which can be worked manually from the helm. Plus all the usual stuff like a storm jib, and towing warps or a drogue. If you think carefully about it, your personal lifeboat will have a lot more going for it than a dedicated life raft could possibly have. And yes, keep that half-inflated dinghy on deck somewhere as a last resort. I suppose lifeboats sink, too, sometimes.

Today's Thought
The storm is master; man, like a ball,
Is toss'd twixt wind and billow.
— Schiller, Wilhelm Tell.

Tailpiece
California cops recently pulled over the Bionic Man after they spotted him doing 120 mph on Interstate 5.

He was fined $1,500 and dismantled for six months.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Multihull vs. monohull

2011-10-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

SO MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about the virtues of multihulls that it mightbe a little out of order even to ask why there aren't more multihulls than monohulls.Whereas a heavy displacement monohull's normal maximum speed is limited to 1.34times the square root of her waterline length (in knots and feet), a catamarancan often reach speeds twice or three times those of a monohull of the samewaterline length. And who in his right mind would rather sail at 5 knots than15? Well, most people, as it happens. Certainly most cruising people.

A trimaran or a proa has a main hull shaped more like that of amonohull, a broader, roomier hull, and, like a catamaran, it gains the extrastability afforded by an outrigger or amas. This extra stability allows amultihull to spread a greater area of sail. That means more horsepower per tonof weight, and thus, along with more slippery hull shapes, greater speed.

But (and there's always a but where sailboats are concerned) cruisingmultihulls, especially catamarans, mostly fail to come up to their owners'expectations of speed because their theoretical potential is more severelycurtailed by extra displacement than is a monohull's.

Most cruisers are notorious for cramming aboard all the stuff they weretrying to get away from on shore, and carting it around with them everywherethey go. Their waterlines climb up the side of the boat inch by inch as theyears go by, and nobody cares much because on a monohull this results in verylittle damage to the boat's average speed and may even improve the handling andstability of some boats.

A multihull, on the other hand, suffers quite badly from overloading,and often becomes more difficult tohandle at sea, being less responsive to the helm. If you have sacrificedcomforts such living space and stowage for the thrill of speed, as you mightwith a catamaran, you might be rather more than disappointed to find that youhave inadvertently sacrificed speed as well when you go cruising.

There are also other reasons for the preponderance of monohullcruisers, such as the problem of finding moorage for a multihull in today'scongested marinas, and the fact that a multihull is as stable upside down as itis the right way up. There's no doubt that multihulls have many virtues,especially in areas where the water is shallow, or where you might want to dryout on the sand. Charter companies in the Caribbean use catamarans extensively,too, so there's obviously a demand for them.

But on the whole, most sailors, deep-sea and coastal, prefer monohulls— and have trained themselves to grin and bear it when a multihull comestearing past them.

Today's Thought

Nothing is more vulgar than haste.
— Emerson, Conduct of Life: Behavior.

Tailpiece

“I have five noses, six mouths and seven ears. What am I?”
“Quite ugly.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boatscolumn.)

The smell of a yacht

2011-10-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

IWELL REMEMBER the first time I smelled a yacht. I was 14, and because of alucky meeting on the beach beneath our small-town home, I was the caretaker ofa 28-foot, hard-chine wooden sloop called Albatross. Rich people from the bigcity 30 miles to the north. Weekenders. I had Albatross to myself after school allweek.

Everyafternoon I'd row out to the moorings in the dinghy and just sitin wonderment in the cramped cabin. It was all new to me, the teak-and-hollysole, the mysterious quarterberths, the V-berth in the forepeak, and the gasolineengine hidden under the companionway ladder.

Butit's the smells I remember now, many decades later. It's the smells that jar mymemory of that sweet little boat bobbing on her mooring in the hot sunshine.

Tarredhemp from the forecastle, kerosene from the galley, along with denaturedalcohol. The subtle aroma of teak bulkheads and old white paint overhead. Faintsmells of gasoline from the engine compartment, and that peculiar smell of dampsailcloth that no sailor will ever forget, coming from the V-berth where thespinnaker was stored in its bag. Coffee from the food locker, and a metallictang from the galvanized anchor chain. And if you pressed your nose to thebronze portholes you recognized a link back through the centuries to theVikings and beyond.

Allthese scents mingled with salt-laden sea air in Albatross's cabin and I wasentranced and bewitched. It was sheer magic, and I was never to forget it.

Andjust the other day I was reading Maurice Griffiths, the well-known Britishsailor and author. He, too, knew about the smell of a yacht:

"Thereis indeed something about the smell of ship that stirs a man's blood, aseductive, persuasive odour of oak and tarred rope and canvas and paint, of varnishand oil and galley smoke and rust, that exciting scent that clings like an aurato every shapely little schooner with her jib-boom steeved above the quays, anddrifts on the breeze from every fishing smack that puts to sea; a hauntingsmell that goes to a man's head like wine and makes him yearn for a free life,open air and a wide horizon, and above all for the kick of a tiller under hisarm and the scend of a stout little ship beneath his feet ... Oh, I know."

Today'sThought

Thereis nothing like an odour to stir memories.

—William McFee, The Market.

Tailpiece

“Youneed glasses.”
“Howdo you know?”
“Icould tell as soon as you walked through the window.”

(Dropby every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The Walter Mitty boats

2011-10-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

JUST ABOUT EVERY MARINA I've ever seen has had its share of Walter Mitty sailboats.You know the ones. Rugged little boats, classic designs, bronze portholes,bowsprits, full keels, even gaff rigs. In short, boats designed to withstandthe rigors of an ocean passage — and owned by people who are never going totake them over the horizon.

Why dosuch people buy such boats? Why are they content to plod along solemnly half amile off the coast, being passed by modern light-displacement boats filled withyoung, laughing crews, and then hightailing it back to port before the lightfails?

Why dopeople fall in love with Flickas and Pacific Seacraft and Westsail 32s whenthey really should be sailing featherweight fluff like Jeanneaus and Beneteaus?

Myguess is that no matter how unlikely it may seem, we like to think we have thefreedom to sail around the world if we want to, and we need a boat capable ofdoing it. It may not be logical, but if ever a really big emergency shouldarise, these are our escape vehicles. I'm talking earthquake, flood, war, politicalturmoil, economic disaster, even nuclear warfare.

Thereis something fascinating about owning a small, self-contained home completewith everything to support life and able to travel away from land, with all itswoes, and take you to a safe haven across the ocean.

That'swhy the Walter Mitty boats have solid-fuel stoves. You can always finddriftwood to burn in them. They have sextants on board in beautifully varnishedwooden cases, and copies of Mary Blewitt's book on celestial navigation in casethe GPS system goes down. They have wind-vanes for self-steering and high-cuttwin jibs for running in the trades. All their standing rigging is a sizebigger than normal. They have small cockpits with large drains, and full keelswith maybe a hint of cutaway up forward.

Suchboats evoke a visceral emotion, a direct connection to the age-old tradition ofthe sea. Such boats will look after you when the chips are down; and the waythings are going these days, you never know when the chips might come tumblingdown.

Andthere's something else. They look good. They look as if they were made to do ajob and do it well. They look as if they were shaped by the sea for the sea.And if you ever need to take advantage of that, they're ready, willing, andable.

Today'sThought

Wemust expect everything and fear everything from time and from men.

—Vauvenargues, Réflexions

Tailpiece

Nothing succeeds like a parakeetwith no teeth.
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a newMainly about Boats column.)

Hospital dilemma

2011-10-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

MEMBERS OF A SEATTLE YACHT CLUB recently finished asix-month multi-million-dollar fundraising campaign for new wing for a nearbychildren's hospital. They wanted it to be a surprise, but it presented a uniqueand unexpected dilemma for the hospital's Administration Committee.

The committee told the yacht club that it was veryflattered and highly grateful, but it was not sure a new wing was necessary.After much discussion, the committee decided to ask a panel of doctors to voteon the idea.

The Allergists voted to scratch it and theDermatologists advised them not to make any rash moves. TheGastro-enterologists had a sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologiststhought the yacht club had a lot of nerve. The Obstetricians felt they were alllaboring under a misconception.

The Ophthalmologists considered the ideashort-sighted; the Pathologists yelled, “Over my dead body,” while the Pediatricianssaid, “Oh, grow up!”

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea wasmadness; the Radiologists could see right through it, and the Surgeons decidedto wash their hands of the whole thing. The Internists though it was a bitterpill to swallow, and the Plastic Surgeons said, “This puts a whole new face onthe matter.” The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologistsfelt the scheme wouldn’t hold water.

The Anesthesiologists thought the whole ideawas a gas and the Cardiologists didn’t have the heart to say no. In the end,though, the Proctologists left the decision up to some arsehole in Administration.

Today's Thought

The most melancholy of human reflections,perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence ofmankind does more harm or good.

-- Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics

Tailpiece

“Can you direct me to a bank, young man?”
“Certainly, sir — that will be $50.”
“Fifty dollars? Isn’t that a lot for atip?”
“Not for a bank director.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Fridayfor a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Seaworthy keels

2011-10-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

MOST modern sailboats are not designed to be the most seaworthy vessels on the open ocean. They're designed as coastal cruisers, whose characteristics make them lighter, faster, more closewinded and often roomier below.

The old rule of thumb is that a boat with a long, traditional type of keel is more resistant to capsize than is a hull with the coastal cruiser's deep, narrow fin keel. At least, that holds true when neither yacht is making way through the water.

A yacht at sea is a dynamic system that receives most of its overturning energy from waves. A traditional keel and hull shape are effective at dissipating this energy gradually, absorbing the blows of the seas more gently.

A fin-keel boat has less underwater area in which to pass the energy on into the sea, and is more vulnerable to capsize when lying still in the water. But a fin-keeler becomes more resistant to capsize if she is kept moving, and can thus dissipate the incoming wave energy into a greater area of water.

A traditional cruising boat, having a more effective roll-damping keel, can better look after herself when lying almost still in the water, or hove to.

Tony Marchaj, a small-boat sailor who is also an internationally renowned aerodynamic and research scientist, says the keel of a truly seaworthy boat should be designed primarily for the survival situation (that is, zero speed) which implies a traditional keel with large lateral area and depth of the hull underbody.
In his book, Seaworthiness: The Forgotten Factor, Marchaj quotes a former editor of Rudder magazine, T. F. Day, who crossed the Atlantic in 1911 in the 25-foot yawl Seabird:

"My long experience in small boats has taught me this: that if a boat is a good boat, when real trouble comes she is best left alone. She knows better what to do than you, and if you leave her alone she will do the right things, whereas nine times out of ten you will do the wrong thing."

Today's Thought
Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.
--Arthur Helps, Friends in Council

Tailpiece
Middle age is when you find yourself doing one bend-over to pick up two things.

Sailing with pirates

2011-10-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

MY COMPUTER has been boarded by pirates again. I am typing this on a strange borrowed machine and I am unsettled and unable to think of anything to do with boats. Except that the thought of pirates reminds me of little Laura Dekker, the 16-year-old Dutch girl who is vying to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone.

Now that she has left Darwin, Australia, on her ketch Guppy, her blogs have suddenly stopped giving her position at sea. She says it's for her own security, which might lead one to believe that she is taking the Red Sea route to the Mediterranean. That's where the Somalia pirates lurk, and pirates, as she has noted, can read blogs, specially the ones translated from Dutch to English.

You might also be inclined to believe that Somali pirates don't bother with impecunious yacht owners when they can ransom rich oil tankers and other fat prey; but as we know, such is not the case. Several yachts have been hijacked, and their crews held to ransom if they're lucky, and killed if they're not. Perhaps the pirates know that even if the sailors and their families can't come up with the ransom money, their governments will, even if they swear they don't do that sort of thing.

Even if Miss Dekker doesn't fall foul of pirates, I don't think the Red Sea/Suez Canal passage is a good choice for a young girl on her own. I hope and pray she's taking the safer Cape route around South Africa, but she certainly hasn't shown any inclination to go that way. I guess it would make better copy for her forthcoming book if she takes the pirate route. She has a definite streak of stubbornness, and there doesn't seem to be much that frightens her, so I fear she may be influenced to go the pirates' way. I can only hope that she, and her advisors, have thought long and hard about this.

Today's Thought
It is when pirates count their booty that they become mere thieves.
--Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods

Tailpiece
"James, did you give the goldfish some fresh water today?"
"No, madam, they haven't finished the water I gave them last week."

Bring back the flags

2011-10-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

WE DON’T SEE ENOUGH FLAGS flying on small boats these days. Hardly anyone even flies a burgee at the masthead any more, which is a great shame because that colorful little triangle of fluttering cloth denotes pride of ownership and bestows a disciplined liveliness on a boat.

And as for signaling flags, we might as well be talking about dodos, or pterodactyls, or home-based land-line telephones. And that’s another pity, because there is a huge section of the International Code of Signals devoted to the ancient art of sending messages by flags.

You can signal with one flag, or two, or three. There are literally hundreds of coded messages waiting to be sent, and anybody with a set of code flags ought to be absolutely itching to send a few. I mean, imagine you spot some old friends aboard a far-flung yacht in an anchorage — but you don’t carry a VHF radio (because you don’t have to) and you don’t have their cell-phone number because you never wrote it down like you were supposed to. So now what? Well, code flags to the rescue, of course.

Get out the signal book. Look up the right signal and hoist the flags. Simple. There are codes for every occasion. For example, here’s a handy three-flag hoist: MEG. It means “Bowels are regular.” That’s a message your friends are always happy to receive. And relieved, you might say. Of course, that might not always be the case, so the people who drew up the international code cunningly also provided MJD (“Patient has flatulence.”) and MIO (“Patient has clay-colored stool.”) There are other codes describing sailors with other delicate variations of tummy problems, but we don’t need to dwell on that now. You can look them up for yourself in private after dinner.

One two-flag signal of particular interest is XP. It is not clear why the compilers of the signal book thought fit to include this hoist, since it means “I am in thick fog.” But perhaps they needed a belly laugh after dealing with all that sordid stool business. In any case, if you ever come across a vessel flying XP, if you can read it, it’s already too late.

One signal you might want to memorize is SN. It means “You should stop immediately. Do not scuttle. Do not lower boats. Do not use the wireless. If you disobey I shall open fire on you.” Heavens, what a vicious and belligerent message for two little flags to convey. The only reply I can think of is MEG flown in reverse order, which should be read as “My bowels are NOT regular.” Not now, anyhow.

The international code does not deal with flags alone, of course. All other forms of signaling by sea are covered, including the use of the human voice as transmitted by radio waves. It seems that radio waves may sometimes distort the human voice so much as to make it intelligible without the help of the international code. Now I fear very few of my sailing friends practice this, but it’s not sufficient to say “One, two, three and four” over the radio. The code insists that you say unaone (oo-nah-wun), bissotwo (bees-soh-too), terrathree (tay-rah-tree) and kartefour (kar-tay-fower.) In fact, here is the full list, just in case you want to impress the Coasties when they ask to come aboard and inspect your potty arrangements:

Figure spelling table

Figure or Mark to be Transmitted

(Code Word Pronunciation)

0 NADAZERO (NAH-DAH-ZAY-ROH)

1 UNAONE (OO-NAH-WUN)

2 BISSOTWO (BEES-SOH-TOO)

3 TERRATHREE (TAY-RAH-TREE)

4 KARTEFOUR (KAR-TAY-FOWER)

5 PANTAFIVE (PAN-TAH-FIVE)

6 SOXISIX (SOK-SEE-SIX)

7 SETTESEVEN (SAY-TAY-SEVEN)

8 OKTOEIGHT (OK-TOH-AIT)

9 NOVENINE (NO-VAY-NINER)

Decimal point

DECIMAL (DAY-SEE-MAL)

Today’s Thought
What harm in getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten or a slipper?
— Rabelais, Works

Tailpiece
The luckiest man is the one who has a wife and an outboard motor that both work.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

First scratch ceremony

2011-10-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

IF YOU’VE EVER owned a brand-new boat, or a newly painted old boat, you must have wondered when then first scratch would come. It’s a time of tension and trepidation as you do your best to protect that beautiful but vulnerable paint job, knowing full well that in the end the first scratch will definitely come, and all that’s really uncertain is just how bad it will be.

You can worry your little guts out for weeks and months while bracing yourself against the inevitable and wondering when the dastardly deed will occur, and who will be the dastard that does it.

This is why I invented the First Scratch Ceremony. It’s one of 19 useful maritime ceremonies, superstitions, prayers, rituals, and curses contained in my book How to Rename Your Boat. And this simple ceremony will relieve you from all the pain of this period of tension and fretting because you yourself are deliberately going to put the first scratch on your boat’s new finish. You’ll do it in some inconspicuous place, of course, where it won’t be seen in a casual glance. And then, when some thoughtless idiot finally ravages your paintwork, you won’t be consumed by rage because it won’t be the first scratch. It won’t be such a shock. You will bypass all those feelings of anger, revenge, gloom, and despair.

Furthermore, this ceremony offers you a perfect excuse to invite your sailing friends to a party.

What you need is a single scratch about an inch long. Use masking tape to mark off a small rectangle, maybe up under the gunwale where it will not be too obvious, and find yourself a suitable instrument to scratch with. Choose it carefully. You don’t want to be embarrassed in front of your guests because the old nail you found won’t penetrate the hard surface of your new Awlgrip.

Now here’s the wording of the ceremony, which you should read aloud:

O Aphrodite, worthy guardian of love and beauty, we seek your kind favor.

Grant us this day your help in preserving the loveliness of this far vessel. Guard her against disfiguration, we beseech you, that she may always be admired and respected by mankind.

We pray for your help to preserve her from misadventure and calamity, so that her looks shall neither be marred nor spoiled.

And yet, even as we beg this favor, we humbly acknowledge that there are times when the gods are too fully occupied to prevent all possible catastrophes to which this vessel will be exposed.

We therefore implore you to recognize the first scratch that shall be made here today in the knowledge that it will spare us the agony of the endless wait — the awful anticipation that keeps honest mortals awake at night, staring into the darkness, wondering when the wonderful new finish will first be violated.

Please bless our first scratch, O Aphrodite, and grant us your help in preserving this lovely vessel from future accidents and collisions that may injure her good looks.

In return for which, we confirm our devotion to thee with a libation offered in the hallowed tradition of the sea.

Now make your scratch and pour or spray champagne over it. Don’t stint. Use the whole bottle. Serve yourself and your guests from separate bottles, and when they’ve all staggered off home, remove the masking tape.

Today’s Thought

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

— Francis Bacon.

Tailpiece

Money cannot buy happiness, but it’s more comfortable to cry in a 40-foot Hinckley than a 26-foot McGregor.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

When might isn't right

2011-10-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

USS Wainwright

AUSTRALIANS cruising under sail have developed a well-earned reputation for contempt of authority. One lovely example I came across recently involved an Aussie yacht and an American warship.

Not many of us realize it, but American warships roam freely over all the oceans of the world, bossing other vessels around, including small sailboats.

I myself was highly indignant when, in a British-flagged 30-footer, I was stopped by a U.S. guided missile cruiser while I was minding my own business in international waters 200 miles off Puerto Rico, en route from the British Virgin Islands to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was sailing with my wife and my 17-year-old son.

The 548-foot-long USS Wainwright came roaring down on us out of the path of the sun and scared the life out of us. They made us all line up in the cockpit and grilled us about who we were, where we were going, what passports we held, and a whole lot more. They had no good reason to stop us, and they had no right to ask those questions. We were angry and resentful, but we were so intimidated we didn’t even dare take a photograph of them.

But the Aussies, aboard the 45-foot steel ketch Hinewai[1] in their own waters, weren’t so easily intimidated. Here’s what they reported on a sailing bulletin board the other day:

“We were off the Queensland coast, just outside the exclusion zone for a joint Aussie/U.S. landing exercise — just around dinner time. The weather was pretty dull so we decided to heave to for the meal and watch the show by eye, night-vision glasses, and radar.

“All of a sudden, ‘American Warship 123’ challenged us on Channel 16 by name, warned that we were close to the exclusion zone and that the boat would be seized if we entered it — and asked our intentions.

“We thanked them for the call, explained we were half a mile from the exclusion zone, hove to, and were in fact slowly moving away from the zone.

“With respect to our intentions, we then advised that we were still considering what pudding to have, but that we would definitely be having coffee afterwards.

“They don’t have a great sense of humour.

“I must admit we were a little miffed that we, an Australian-flagged yacht in Australian waters, could be challenged by a U.S. warship.

“But the scariest thing was, they must have been close enough to read our name on the bow (in the dark), yet we never saw them — no lights, no radar return near-by and nothing through the night vision.”

[1] http://www.oceanodyssey.net/

Today’s Thought

He who is too powerful seeks power beyond his power.

— Seneca, Hippolytus

Tailpiece

“Have your eyes ever been checked before?”

“No, doctor, they’ve always been brown.”

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